The Credit Draper Episode 41

Celia was waiting for him in the warehouse yard. “What’s in the parcel?” “Samples.” “Samples of what?” “I don’t know. Aprons, shirts, pullovers.” “What on earth for?”

“They’re for Uncle Mendel. I’ve to become a credit draper.”

“Stop a minute, Avram. What is going on here?”

“I told you. I’ve to become a credit draper.”

“Like Uncle Mendel?”

“I’ve to go and work with Uncle Mendel. In some place near Oban.”

“What about school?”

“I have to leave. There is no money to continue with my education. Papa Kahn and Jacob Stein decided it. I’m like a goods train. Shunted here, there and everywhere. Now I have to go to some damned place they don’t even play football. Just shinty.” Celia stamped her feet in the snow. “You can’t leave me.”

He looked at her face, at the two familiar lines frowning her forehead between her eyes. He didn’t know whether to be glad or sad that these lines were caused in his honour. “Why not?” he asked. “You’re all I have.”

“No, I’m not. You’re mother is coming back in a few days.”

“What?”

“I forgot. Jacob Stein told me. He just found out this morning.”

“Mother is coming back?”

“Yes. Under the protection of the Jewish Representative Council.”

“What does that mean?”

“I didn’t really understand. Something about justice and fair play.”

“Well, there wasn’t anything fair about taking her away in the first place.”

They walked on in silence after that until eventually she hissed: “I hate Jacob Stein.” “So do I.”

“Why do you hate him?” “Because he pushes people around. Why do you hate him?”

“He’s always trying to kiss me. And he thinks he’s such a big shot. Ever since he was made a bailie. He’ll want a knighthood next.”

“Jews get knighthoods?”

“I think so. In London.”

She tugged at his arm, directed him towards the bridge spanning the River Clyde that led them southwards out of the city. “Let’s walk home,” she said.

He buttoned up his jacket to the full, then looked down to follow the path of his shoes as they negotiated the wet cobbles alongside Celia’s own petite laced-up boots.

Madame Kahn arrived home with a matter-of-factness that suggested she’d just come back from Arkush’s bakery on Abbotsford Place rather than from over a year at an internment camp. But the differences between the person who had left and who had returned were substantial.

First, there was her hair. Or what was left of it. No longer did Madame Kahn boast those long thick locks that Avram had witnessed hanging loose as she struck Mary with a hairbrush. In fact, Madame Kahn had no need for a hairbrush at all, for her hair had been shorn to within a farthing’s-width of her scalp.

Diminished

It was as if her whole presence had diminished. She had lost her stature. There was a nervousness about her.

She looked much smaller too, and her skin sagged on her face in the same way that her clothes hung loose on her body. To Avram, it wasn’t as if she had just reduced in size compared to his own growth over the last year.

It was as if her whole presence had diminished. She had lost her stature.

There was a nervousness about her. He had seen the same look of insecurity in the eyes of the soldiers who had returned from the Front, their perception of the world shattered, their place in the new regime no longer assured.

She shook hands with him, lightly embraced her daughter, sniffed around the hallway, ran a finger over a table-top then disappeared into her bedroom, leaving a trail of lavender behind her. After a few minutes, she came back in, looking even paler than when she had arrived. “How has Papa been?” she asked Celia. “He is getting stronger.”

“Good. Soup. He must have soup.” She bustled over to the range, started to lift the lids of pots. “Is there any soup?”

“There is chicken soup, Mother. But he has just eaten.”

“I see.” A lid clanged to the floor. She ignored it. “And Nathan? Has he eaten too?”

“Nathan hardly eats.”

“I see.”

Madame Kahn flopped down into a chair, took a handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbed her eyes.

“You can always wear a headscarf, Mother,” Celia suggested. “Or even a sheitl?”

Madame Kahn laughed, a short almost hysterical cackle. “See the wonderful ways of the Lord. I go to a camp as an enemy alien and return as an Orthodox Jew wearing a wig. No, I will not wear a sheitl. A headscarf, maybe. But a sheitl made of horse-hair? Never.” Then, she seemed to calm herself.

“Camps,” she said quietly. “No one should have to endure such a thing. And, Avram, you are to work with Mendel?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“And when will that be?”

“I have to go at the end of the week.” “I see.” Then in an unexpected display of affection, she held out her arms to Celia. “Come, daughter.”

Celia approached hesitantly and was bundled into the bosom of her mother. “How are you, my little one? You have grown so much. You have become beautiful. And Mary? Where is Mary?”

“She’s wringing out the laundry in the back,” Celia said from within the smother of her mother’s grasp.

“Well, when she comes in, tell her the hall furniture needs dusting. Now, I must go and attend to Nathan.”

Avram laid out the new stock samples on his bed. A jumper, a couple of work-shirts, a girdle and a full-length apron. He hadn’t known what the girdle was until the woman who checked out the samples served up an explanation in a thick tobacco-scratched voice that made him blush. But it was the full-length aprons that were the big sellers.

More on Monday.

The Credit Draper is the first in a trilogy by J. David Simons. He has written five novels and is published by Saraband. His work can be purchased at saraband.net.