The Tiger in the Well, Page 29

  Intrigued, as she knew he would be, he followed. She shut the door behind him and looked around before whispering, "What's your name? Is it John?"

  "John's the other footman. I'm Alfred. But--"

  "Listen, Alfred, I want your help. You're right - I'm not here as a maidservant. I'm here because of my cousin. . ."

  She was standing close, looking up at him, hoping she looked appealing and desperate. His expression was still suspicious, but he was interested now too, and not unwilling to stand close to a pretty girl while she confided in him.

  "Your cousin?"

  "Yes. Lucy. You remember - she had to leave because of that Frenchman - that. . ."

  Understanding dawned. "The valet!" he said. "Ah."

  "Yes, the pig," she said. "She told me everything. How he promised to marry her, how he swore he'd look after her, everything. It broke my mother's heart - that's Lucy's aunt, see. We was like sisters. And I swore I'd get even with him, the swine. So. . . But no one's got to know. Specially him."

  "What're you going to do?"

  "I don't know yet. I'll find something. I'll destroy him, I will. She was such a sweet girl. . . And she's ruined now, she'll never get another situation. . ."

  He nodded. He wasn't very bright, she thought - vain, conceited, like all footmen, fond of showing off his broad chest and his manly legs in their white stockings - but good-hearted, on the whole, if she was any judge. And he knew what happened to servants without a character.

  "So, please, Alfred, can I trust you? There's no one else here I can say a word to. . ."

  "Yeah," he said. "I won't give yer away. I hates that prinking French popinjay, anyway. We all do. Nasty bit o' work.We all thought you was making up to him. . ."

  "I was! I want to trap him, see! I want to catch him and pay him out. You don't mind me telling you this, do you, Alfred? I don't want to get you into trouble. . ."

  " 'S all right. I'll stick up for yer. They was wondering about you in the kitchen - them others. 'Cause you don't seem like a housemaid - too ladylike. You bin a lady's maid? Thought so. Well, that explains it. If you don't want to stick out, you want to act a bit more natural-like. Have a laugh. Then you won't seem so out of place. You don't look like your cousin. . ."

  "She took after her pa. Oh, Alfred, I am grateful."

  She laid a hand on his chest, but only for a moment. She felt him stir with a chivalry that probably took him quite by surprise.

  "Where is he now?" she said quietly. "Mr Michelet?"

  "He'll be upstairs, with the secretary. Second floor. That's where the master works most of the time. The master's own staff, they have their sitting room up there too. Next to the lift."

  "Do the household staff clean up there, or is that Mr Michelet's job, like the cellar?"

  "Who told you about the cellar?"

  Careful, she thought. "I saw the open door in the library when I took the master's tea in yesterday. I asked Eliza about it."

  "Ah. . . No, he cleans down there, but not upstairs. You'll be doing that. Here - what you going to do to him?"

  "I don't know. I just need to get close to him first, get his confidence, let him get all sweet with me like he got with Lucy. I need to find out - oh, everything, what he does for the master, when he has time off, what he likes to eat . . . everything. Alfred, I'm trusting you - you won't let me down, will you?"

  He looked down at her, tall and confident and masterful. Then he winked and tapped his nose.

  "You leave it to me," he said.

  Then before leaving she did something she'd never have believed possible before all this began: she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. It was just a swift, hurried brush of the lips, but it seemed to fulfil some expectation of his, and it cost her nothing. And it might help save Harriet.

  "Mama! Mama!"

  Harriet was inconsolable. Rebecca tried to pick her up, but Harriet squirmed away and threw herself down on the worn carpet. Ever since she'd woken up the morning before and Mama hadn't been there, she'd alternated between helpless indignant rage and gasping, tearful suspicion. It might have been easier for Rebecca if it hadn't been raining, because then they could have gone into the little backyard, where Morris Katz had fixed up a plank and a rope as a swing for Leah when she was younger. But the rain was incessant.

  Rebecca had sung to her, drawn pictures for her, played with the wooden dog for her, tried to pick her up, tried to put her down when she finally started dozing, tried to feed her, tried to make her drink: but Harriet's rage and unhappiness were enormous, unbounded, as deep as the foundations of the earth.

  "I never heard a child cry like that!" said Leah admiringly. "She's got lungs like a prima donna."

  "What can I do to stop her?" said Rebecca helplessly.

  "Join in," said Leah.

  "I feel like it. Sally left me looking after her, and all I do is make her cry. What a noise. . ."

  Just then they heard another voice in the hall, and Mr Katz came in. It was unusual to see him there at midday.

  But here he was, and he hadn't even taken off his apron. His deep voice filled the room - and Harriet stopped crying.

  She looked up, tear-stained, at this big rumbling bear, with his dark whiskers and his dirty apron, and he looked down at her little frown and determined, trembling lip, and he swept her up in a moment.

  Too astonished to protest, she stared at him in amazement as the strange urgent words tumbled out of those nearly hidden lips. He was serious: she could tell that from his eyes. But he was strong and she was safe: she could tell that from his solid arms and his deep voice.

  Then he stopped talking and turned his eyes to her. And, weak with sorrow and fear, tears still wet on her eyelashes, she had enough energy left to wonder where his mouth had gone, so she reached up and lifted the moustache to see if it was still there.

  When she found it, it was smiling. What a surprise! She looked up, uncertain, and saw his dark eyes smiling too. So she smiled back. She couldn't help it.

  "Eh, bubeleh! What an eloquent silence!" said the big man in Yiddish, and his deep voice rumbled in his chest. She could feel it as she leant against him.

  She gave a long, shuddering, exhausted sigh, and her thumb came up to her mouth. She gazed at him solemnly.

  "Look at that!" said Mrs Katz. "The injustice of it! There's Leah and Rebecca spent all day yesterday and all day today trying to stop her crying, and he comes in and lets her play with his whiskers and she stops in a moment."

  "There's nothing for it, Rebecca," said Leah, "we'll have to grow beards. But Papa, what is it? What have you come home for?"

  "Trouble," said Morris Katz. "Isaac Feinberg's son was attacked by some roughs in Mile End yesterday. They left a note pinned to his coat saying No Jews. And the synagogue was painted with the same slogan - they can't spell Jews, either. They write it Juwes. Someone threw a brick through the window of Bloom's the baker's. . . I don't want you to go out alone until things are calmer, d'you see?"

  "But - are you talking about a pogrom, Morris?What do you mean? Is it that bad?"

  "I don't know yet! I just don't like the feel of things, that's all. If Goldberg was free to move around, maybe he could rally the Jews, keep us together. We're all splitting up into factions. But Reuben Singer said he saw him last night - at Arnold Fox's meeting, of all places. . ."

  "The man's mad," said Mrs Katz decisively. "He's as bad as these crazy men from Hibbat Zion. They're everywhere now, you hear their talk all over the place. You haven't been listening to them?"

  Hibbat Zion was a movement of Jews who wanted to encourage a return to the Holy Land. Morris Katz waved impatiently.

  "To hear what they say, of course I've been listening! D'you think I buy my opinions ready-made? And I'm not so sure they are crazy, Hibbat Zion. They sound to me as if they're talking a lot of sense."

  "Goldberg would know better. He wouldn't waste his time with them."

  "One minute he's mad, the next minute he'd know better! Make
your mind up. Anyway, you're wrong. Goldberg would argue with them, but he'd listen first. That's what you people don't understand about him--"

  "You people! Who's you people? His own wife he calls you people?"

  "Oh, I can't stop now," said Morris Katz. "I've got a shop to run. Rebecca - take the child. Remember what I said - don't go out alone. Keep the door shut."

  He embraced his wife and daughter more warmly than he usually did, and hurried out. Harriet knew nothing of the move from one pair of arms to another. Rebecca sat down with her, marvelling at the lightness and softness of this creature who only a few minutes before had been howling, kicking, screaming in fury. Her little face was drenched with sleep. She was at home, in Orchard House, and they were all there, Uncle Webster, Sarah-Jane, Jim, Bruin and Mama, and she was with them, commanding them never to go away again.

  Like many immigrant Jews, Morris Katz belonged to a chevra: a religious organization not quite a synagogue but more than a club, where services were held, discussions and arguments and learning of all kinds took place, and where poor men worn out after their day's toil could go and refresh themselves in the fountain of the Talmud, the collective wisdom of Jewishness. For many immigrants the chevra was a link with the past, with the society and fellowship of the town or the village they'd come from, and they clung to it in this strange land as something familiar.

  And when Morris Katz visited the chevra that evening, he found that his wife's guess about Hibbat Zion was right, for there was a visitor in the room, a pale intense young Russian Jew Katz had never seen before.

  "My brothers," he was saying in a passionate, musical voice, "what is happening all over Europe? Shall I tell you? Every nation is coming to a consciousness of itself - realizing who and what it is - and as it does so, it expels all those who don't belong. Russia throws us out of Russia - Germany doesn't want us in Germany - Poland can't wait to hustle us out of Poland.

  "But aren't we a nation too? Isn't every Jew a member of a nation - but one without a country?"

  This question had been posed many times, and many of the men there had argued it back and forth. But the young man went on:

  "I say to you that yes, there is a Jewish nation, and yes, there is a country which is ours, given to us by the Lord - given to Abraham, given to Isaac - yes, I'm talking about Eretz Israel, the land of Israel!"

  Morris Katz had heard that before too. Talk like this was being heard more and more, among the Eastern European Jews in particular. And in spite of what he'd said to his wife, he really wasn't sure what he thought about it, which was why he liked to listen to the arguments.

  "But. . . We've settled here," said one of the men. "We have businesses here, homes here. And what would we do in Eretz Israel? I'm not a farmer. . ."

  "No, our visitor's right," said another. "You can be born here and die here, but they'll never think of you as English - you'll always be a Jew first - an alien--"

  "It's the same in Germany--"

  "It's the same everywhere!"

  "Wait, wait, wait!" said another objector. "Every nation has its own language. Right? That's one of the things that makes it a nation. So what language would your Jewish nation speak? Yiddish? German? Polish?"

  "Hebrew," said the young man.

  Shrugs, nods, vigorous head-shakings, and a dozen voices at once. Morris Katz listened with half an ear, obscurely troubled. He knew that Dan Goldberg would have a dozen arguments to beat this one; but Goldberg wasn't there, and intense believers like this young man were becoming more and more influential.

  The room they were in was narrow and dark, and extremely hot and stuffy from the iron stove in the corner. Morris Katz hadn't meant to stay for long, and he was about to get up and leave when there was a sudden, shocking crash of glass.

  All talk stopped. The talkers froze. On the floor among their feet was a scatter of glass and a brick, and chalked on the brick were the words NO JUWES.

  It took a moment for the men to gather their wits. Then those nearest the window, Morris Katz among them, leapt up and peered out into the rain. Across the street, under a gaslamp, two young men made an obscene gesture and ran off laughing.

  As two of the Jews made for the door to try and catch them, as others hunted for a broom to sweep up the glass and a patch of cardboard to put over the window, Morris Katz met the eyes of the visitor. The young man looked determined and frightened and triumphant all at once.

  "Well?" he said. "It's beginning, Morris Katz. You're going to have to choose. Are you with us, or against us? It's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. Do you want the Jews to have a country? Or do you want them to vanish?"

  Morris Katz didn't reply. He felt that the choice wasn't as simple as that. He didn't like these crude certainties; and more than ever he wished Dan Goldberg was there, to help them all see what the truth was.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  THE ENTRY IN THE LEDGER

  That same night, Goldberg held a conference on the fourth floor of a tobacco warehouse in Wapping. It was a place he'd used before; a sovereign to the night-watchman, and the place was his. Once the windows were covered with sacking, no lights could be seen from the street, and provided no one dropped a match and burnt the warehouse down, they were perfectly safe.

  Kid Mendel, the Soho gangster, was there, and so was Moishe Lipman, the leader of the Jewish gangs in Bethnal Green; and so, looking far from easy, were the young Russian from Hibbat Zion and several other representatives of Jewish causes. There were some of the earnest socialists, too, and Reuben Singer, and Bill - about twenty men, in all, and they eyed each other warily, waiting for Goldberg to speak. Warily, that is, except for Kid Mendel, who sat on a bale of tobacco with one immaculately shod foot resting on the opposite knee, looking around with urbane curiosity.

  When they had all arrived, Goldberg began. He spoke in English, translating into Yiddish and Russian as he went along.

  "I've called you all here, gentlemen, because we have to make a decision very soon about the violence that's going to erupt in our midst. We know it's coming; we've been seeing the signs for weeks. We have to decide how we're going to meet it. And what we decide will have a great effect on the lives of all of us.

  "Now as you look around you'll see men you know, men you don't know, men you trust, men you wouldn't give the time of day to. There are capitalists here and there are socialists. There are those who want all Jews to live in Palestine, and those who are prospering in London. The only thing we have in common is that we're Jews.

  "But for the moment that's the important thing, because that's what we're going to be attacked for. Now you've all put aside your other concerns and come to this meeting, and I'm very glad to see you. What we'll do to start with is go around briefly and compare our observations about how things are in our different areas. Then we'll decide what to do about it. Who'd like to start? Mr Mendel?"

  "With pleasure, Dan," said Kid Mendel. "But I've got a question for you first. You're no fool, and we all know there's a price on your head. How do you know one of us won't turn you in as soon as we leave here?"

  Goldberg smiled, and his eyes glittered with pure innocence. "D'you know, I hadn't thought of that?" he said, and no one believed him for a moment. "Tell you what, Kid - if you know who's going to turn me in, ask him to leave the room, and I'll tell the rest of you how I'm going to spike his guns. Then he can come back in, and we'll get on with the business."

  Smiles all round, the broadest from Kid Mendel himself. He nodded.

  "All right," he said. "I suppose I'll have to trust my fellow Jews, even the law-abiding ones. The situation in Soho's like this, gentlemen. . ."

  Sally was too tired to explore that night. Instead she lay listening to Eliza's faint snores and reviewed what she'd discovered so far.

  Firstly, the business with the footman. She'd been foolish to expose herself so easily to getting caught, but if they thought that her real target was Michelet, they wouldn't think her curiosity about
the Tzaddik was suspicious: she'd be just trying to find a way to Michelet through him. On the whole, she'd come out well of that encounter, after a few moments of panic.

  Secondly, Michelet himself. Every time she saw him now, she found herself remembering the secretary's words: Michelet had been convicted of an offence involving children. Images of what that might have been, and images of Harriet connected with it, strained insistently to come into her mind.

  Thirdly, the secretary himself and those offices on the second floor. That was where she must go next.

  Fourthly, the matter she'd overheard them discussing - and that was the most urgent of all these urgent things. The Tzaddik, through Parrish, was planning to start a riot - an attack on the Jews - and unleash who knew what savagery and hatred. . . She had the sense of some huge earth-movement, a landslide, beginning to move under her; and all she could do was hold back a few pebbles.

  But somehow the key to it all lay in that bloated, inert mass of flesh, the Tzaddik. Somehow the way to stop him was to find out who he was - or who else he was; and the way to find out that was to understand the plot against her and Harriet.

  Why had he picked on her, out of all the women in London with a small child? He was so hooded, so guarded, so mysterious that even when she was holding a cup to his lips, she could sense nothing but his deathly helplessness. And the fact that the malevolence that victimized her came out of such infantile weakness made it all the more chilling. Out of the strong came forth sweetness. . . She remembered Samson's riddle. Out of the still came forth poison. Out of the dark. . . Out of the past. . .

  She fell asleep.

  All over Whitechapel, all over Spitalfields and Mile End and Wapping, the rain fell unceasingly. The sewers were engorged; the drains and gutters brimmed, choked, overflowed.

  In the pubs, in the Mechanics' Improvement Societies, in kitchens and parlours and eating-houses, the word was spreading that there was going to be trouble.

  Dockers who were out of work, factory hands, brewery workers, toilers in warehouses and tanneries, navvies, casual labourers of all sorts: anyone who felt cheated, dispossessed, done out of a living or a home or a bit of space. . . Parrish's men moved among them, buying drinks, lending an ear, letting the poison drip.