Chapter 5 The Next World #2
The only other woman in evidence might have been cast as the ancient lady’s foil, so pristine and contemporary did she appear.
She was maybe eighteen, with black hair piled atop her head in Swiss-roll shapes (how, Saul wondered, was such a style achieved?) and fake pearls the size of marbles in her ears.
Through her V-necked light-pink sweater you could see the outline of her brassiere.
This fact was certainly not lost on her companion, a swarthy youth with a tidemark on his neck.
He was treating her to a half pint of stout and an explanation of why Britain must withdraw from Mandate Palestine.
His voice was loud and authoritative, but his grasp of geopolitics was so tenuous that Saul had half a mind to set him straight.
Except he could see from the girl’s blank expression, the way she suppressed a yawn and concealed it with an encouraging nod, that she wasn’t listening to a single word.
He was right. Good heavens, she was thinking.
Some people do love the sound of their own voice.
If I wanted a bloody lecture, I could have stayed at home, listened to Ma jaw on about driving a Red Cross ambulance in France as a girl.
If I never hear anything about wars and foreigners again, it will be too soon.
Saul and Honor found a corner banquette and sat down with their Scotches (he’d thought neat whisky was a man’s drink, but one learned something new every day). He waited for her to explain further about her decisive reinvention. Instead, she told him of her plans to set up a literary quarterly.
“Perhaps,” she said, “you might do me the honor of letting me publish your work. I know everyone must be clamoring to do so. And I certainly don’t want any special favors.
But I’m such an admirer. And if we were to have you in our inaugural issue—well, what a coup it should be!
And not that this matters to you, I’m sure, but I intend to pay my writers above the going rate.
After all, the venture will be nothing without them. ”
These words fell delightfully on Saul’s ears.
As susceptible to flattery as the next man, he was also living hand to mouth, his main income coming from dribs and drabs of translation work.
In common with many writers and artists, his once-promising career had been derailed by Hitler.
When he was thirty, an esteemed Romanian press had accepted his first poetry collection.
The next day, Germany invaded Poland. Seven years later, the book was finally published in London, Paris, and Palestine.
It received many nice notices. But as far as Saul was concerned, those poems were from another life, written by a different person.
For the past two years, he had written poetry only in English, his mother tongues of Ukrainian, German, and Yiddish quite consigned to history.
Four of his recent efforts had been published in New Writing, John Lehmann’s anti-fascist periodical.
Some journalism, too. But he needed more exposure, better connections.
So with little hesitation, he promised to contribute original work to every issue of Honor’s journal, as well as take on a to-be-defined role as European poetry editor.
Only later, much later, did Saul wonder if Honor had invented this publishing venture on the spot, to make some sort of secret atonement.
“I’m hoping it will give me a purpose in the coming months and years,” she said. “Gerald hasn’t got long, you see.”
Saul dropped his hand over hers. “How terrible,” he said. “Is this what the doctors say?”
“We’re looking at four weeks at the most, they think. I shouldn’t be away from him now, not really. His nurse is there. She’s very good. But I worry if I’m out. I’ve hardly left the house lately, so I was overdue a visit to Naomi. I do like to see her when I can.”
“I’m sure she treasures your visits. She lights up in your company, anyone can see that.”
“She really hadn’t mentioned me to you before?”
“Is there a particular reason she might have?”
Honor withdrew her hand from his and ran a fingertip around the rim of her glass. “No, no reason. How conceited of me to imagine I’d be the subject of your conversations!” She grinned abstractedly. “Now, she said you were her cousin—are you actually cousins?”
“As opposed to what?” he said, laughing.
“Do you mean because she is so English and I am so foreign? Yes, we are cousins. Our mothers were sisters. Naomi’s mother, my aunt Sylvia, she married an Englishman and came to London in the early part of the century.
A lot of people were leaving the old country, you know, at that time.
So we didn’t grow up together, Naomi and I.
But we did meet occasionally, at weddings and so forth.
And now we are both here, and both widowed rather young. ”
Honor opened her mouth to sympathize, but Saul raised a hand. “A story for another day, perhaps.” He took a sip of whisky. “I’m just glad to know she has a friend like you. By the way, how on earth did you wangle the coupons for those wonderful cakes? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“You probably shouldn’t ask. But Naomi deserves a treat.
” She smiled and affected a cockney accent.
“And what the eye don’t see, the ’eart won’t grieve over!
” They both laughed, and she said, “Speaking of which, paper is still rationed, of course. Our journal may have to be slenderer than I’d like. But I won’t let it stop me.”
“I’ve got a feeling,” said Saul, “that very little can stop you once you’ve set your mind on something. Now, how about another drink?”
She looked at her wristwatch. “I really ought to be getting back to Gerald. But can I give you a lift somewhere? I’m going to find a taxi.”
Outside, a light drizzle was falling. As they walked in the direction of a taxi stand on the Commercial Road, the unlovely setting took on a strange enchantment.
His destiny, Saul fancied, was switching lanes via the conduit of this puzzling woman, whose cryptic accounts of herself attracted him in ways he couldn’t explain.
He didn’t remember what they talked about during the taxi ride to West London.
It was eclipsed by the memory that, as they parted, Honor said, “Will you ask Naomi to tell you about me, about the history between my family and hers—yours? There are things you ought to know. But they’re better coming from her.
After you’ve done that, will you telephone me?
We’re in the book. Do phone, even if it’s to say you never want to see me again.
” She clasped his hand through the window.
“People used to call me Elsie,” she added as the driver sped her off into the night.
Saul rarely visited the East End these days.
Naomi was dead; in the winter of 1950, she caught the flu, which turned into pneumonia.
She was forty-three—no age at all. But she wasn’t a strong woman, and the infection took her quickly.
Now she lay next to her husband in the Willesden Jewish Cemetery.
This was thanks to Honor, who paid for everything, including the plot and the marble headstone.
By then, Saul understood why Honor felt a duty to Naomi, and to himself.
He’d learned, as Honor had put it, all about the history between their families.
Still, he was grateful for her generosity.
Naomi deserved a nice resting place, after all she’d endured in life.
But who will organize my funeral? he pondered as he stood outside the Classic Cinema on the King’s Road, smoking and waiting for Mina to change out of her uniform so he could walk her home.
He’d been to see Angel Face with Robert Mitchum: a bleak film, he’d thought, unwholesome in its preoccupation with sex and death.
Perhaps Honor would see to the arrangements, if they remained friends until then.
She was bound to outlive him. While she’d always been coy about her age, he assumed she was five, even ten years his junior.
Well, maybe not ten. She had lines around her eyes, he’d noticed lately.
But her body hadn’t changed one jot, not by one wrinkle or freckle or bulge.
It was as taut and perfect as a girl’s, with that sharp vertical crevice bisecting her midriff, and breasts that disappeared when she lay on her back, but for the large, dark nipples, like ripe blackberries.
Of course, it was having children that ruined women’s bodies.
From gestating one small baby girl, Gila had acquired lurid purple tiger stripes on her belly, which hung down over her pubis like an apron.
One of the sharpest disappointments of his life occurred when Marya was two and Gila stopped nursing.
The high, firm globes of her breasts shrank and withered until what remained resembled Marya’s little socks.
No one warned you about these things before you were married.
“Oh, you waited,” said Mina, tucking her scarf more firmly into her coat. “You are a dear. I hate going home by myself on these dark evenings. What did you think of the flick?”
“Not bad. Stylish and rather chilling.” He offered her his arm. “Home, young lady?”
As they strolled, Mina told Saul about the new class she was taking, to learn how to be a mannequin.
“You probably think there’s nothing to learn, that you simply wear clothes and walk up and down.
But you couldn’t be more wrong. For instance, there’s a particular way to take off a jacket and still appear elegant.
I’m naturally talented at walking, though.
Signore Romano always says so. You ought to see some of the clumsy heffalumps who struggle with the basics.
It’s not complicated: chin up, stomach in, pelvis forward. ”