2009 - We Are All Made of Glue (31 page)

“You are a bit naughty, Mrs Shapiro.”

“Why get ready for the grave? It will catch you soon enough anyway, isn’t it? Why not to enjoy the moment as it flies.” She flapped her hands like birds’ wings. “You know Goethe?”

I shook my head. Then I thought of something.

“Maybe it’s because…” I remembered his intake of breath on the phone. “I told him you had a son.”

A son who would inherit her estate. Unless, of course, she remarried.

She looked at me sharply. “How you know about this son?”

“The social worker told me. Mrs Goodney.”

She stopped. I pretended to be looking out of the window. Go on, go on! I was silently willing her, but she went quiet.

After a few moments, she said, “Ach, this woman. All she thinks about is how to shvindel me. I told her I heff a son because she was wanting me to sign the Power of Returning. I said my son will be returning. He will heff the house.”

“But he’s not your son, is he?” I said gentry.

There was a pause. “Not mine. No.”

“So who was his mother?”

She sighed. “This whole
megillah
is too long for you. You will be falling asleep before I tell it.”

“But tell me anyway.”

“It was the other one. Naomi Shapiro.”

§

Little by little, I drew it out of her. Her real name was Ella Wechsler, she said, pronouncing it carefully, as though not quite sure it belonged to her. She was born in 1925 in Hamburg. I calculated that would make her eighty-one. Her family was Jewish, but of the pick and mix variety. Speck but no sausages. Sabbath and Sunday. Christmas as well as Hanukkah—not that all this made any difference to the Nazis, when the time came. Her father, Otto Wechsler, ran a successful printing business; her mother, Hannah, was a pianist; her two older sisters, Martina and Lisabet, were students. Their house, a solid four-storey villa in the Grindel Quarter, was a hanging-out place for musicians, artists, heartbroken lovers, dreamers, travellers arriving or departing, four cats, and a German maid called Dotty. There was always coffee mit schlagsahne, always music and conversation going on. She chuckled.

“We were better at being German than the Germans. I thought this life was normal. I did not know such happiness was not permitted to Jews, Georgine. I did not know what it means to be a Jew until Herr Hitler told me.”

But by 1938, Hitler’s message was loud and clear—clear enough for the family to realise they had to get out of Germany before things got worse.

“You see in that time Hitler was thinking only how to clear out the Jewish people from Germany. The plan for exterminations came after.”

The Wechslers—Ella, Martina, Lisabet, and their parents, fled to London. Ella was nearly thirteen years old, Martina was seventeen, Lisabet twenty. In 1938 the Wechslers had been able to bribe their way out of Germany, but England did not hold out her arms in welcome. The 1905 Aliens Act meant that they could only come to Britain if they already had a job to come to.

“Even the English they did not want us. Too many Jews were running away from pogroms in Poland, Russia, Ukrainia. Everybody thought it was a big sport to chase the Jews, isn’t it?”

Through a cousin on his mother’s side, Otto Wechsler had managed to secure a job in a print shop on Whitechapel Road—it was a huge ancient Heidelberg press which he coaxed back into life. The owner, Mr Gribb, was a widower from Elizavetgrad who had changed his name from Gribovitch when his family fled the pogroms in 1881. Hannah Wechsler became his housekeeper. Lisabet worked in a bakery. Martina trained as a nurse. Ella went to the Jewish school in Stepney.

They lived in a poky two-roomed flat above the print shop (“Everything we touched was bleck from the ink”) in the heart of the East End Jewish community, and they counted themselves blessed.

They received coded letters via Switzerland from their family describing the impact of the Nuremberg Laws, the enforced wearing of yellow stars, the terror of Kristallnacht, the expropriation of businesses, the expulsion from the professions (Cousin Berndt turned out of his surgery and made to sweep leaves in the park), the public humiliations, the increasingly ugly assaults in the streets (Uncle Frank’s front teeth broken by a cheering, jeering gang of schoolboys). Actions that an individual would find morally repugnant became amusing when there was a crowd cheering you on. Then the mass transportations started, and the letters stopped.

I felt the tremor in Mrs Shapiro’s shoulders, the long catch of her breath. We were still sitting side by side on the bed. The light had faded in the window, and the roar of traffic outside intensified with the onset of rush hour. But we were in a different world.

“Tell me about Artem. When did you meet him?”

“In 1944 he arrived in London. In the spring. Eyes crazy like a madman. Still asking if they had seen his sister.”

Skeletal, louse-ridden, hollow-eyed, he’d fetched up at the Newcastle docks on a British merchant ship that had snuck out from Gothenburg with a cargo of butter and ball bearings. The Seaman’s Mission had taken him in and he was passed on, via Jewish relief organisations, to the flat in Whitechapel Road. He stayed with them for a year, helping to run the printing press and sleeping on a camp bed at the back of the workshop. He was clever with his hands. He didn’t say much—he spoke Russian and only a few phrases of German and English—but his silence, brooding and mysterious, seemed to the girls to speak volumes. In his spare time, he started to make a violin. Lisabet, Martina and Ella watched him working with the fretsaw and the glue, his head bowed over the workbench, a thin self-rolled cigarette hanging from his lip, humming to himself. By then, Ella was eighteen, Martina was twenty-three and Lisabet twenty-six. All of them were a bit in love with him and a bit in awe of him.

“Did he finish the violin?”

“Yes. Gott knows where he got the strings. But in Petticoat Lane at that time you could buy all what you needed. When he was playing, it was like the angels in heaven. Sometimes I or
Mutti
accompanied mit the piano.”

I remembered the music in the piano stool. Delius. ‘Two Brown Eyes’. Ella Wechsler. Her name was written in the front of the songbook, but the brown eyes had belonged to somebody else.

“Do you still play the piano, Mrs Shapiro? Ella?” Somehow, the new name didn’t seem to fit the old lady I’d grown fond of.

“Look at my hends, darlink.”

She held them out in front of her, bony, with swollen joints and shrivelled brown-stained skin. I took them and warmed them in mine. They were so cold.

“And Naomi? Who was she?”

I had such a strong image from the photographs of the sweet heart-shaped face, the tumble of brown curls, the playful eyes. Mrs Shapiro didn’t reply. She was gazing into a place beyond the dusky window. When at last she spoke, all she said was, “Naomi Lowentahl. She was rather tall.”

Then she went quiet again. I didn’t interrupt. I knew she’d tell me in her own time.

“Yes, nice looking. Always mit red lipstick, nice shmata. Who would heff thought she would be the type to go away digging in the ground in Israel?” Her mouth twitched. Another silence. She withdrew her hands from mine and started to fiddle with her rings. “Some people said she was beautiful. Eyes always blazing like a fire. Yes, she was like a person on fire. She was in loffwith Arti, of course.”

“And he…?”

She sniffed. “Yes. And he.”

Artem Shapiro and Naomi Lowentahl were married in the synagogue at Whitechapel in October 1945, after the end of the war. Ella, Hannah and Otto Wechsler went to the wedding. Lisabet was away in Dorset on her own honeymoon with a Polish Jewish airman. Martina had been killed by a V2 rocket raid in July 1944, on her way home from the Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green—one of the last air raids of the war. But Mr Gribb put on a good spread for the couple. People came from all over Stepney just to get a bit of chicken.

A sharp rap on the door made us both jump. Then without waiting for an answer, the woman in the pink uniform, the same one I’d met earlier, barged into the room.

“Tea time, Mrs Shapiro.”

She caught sight of me.

“You’ll have to leave,” she said. “Mrs Shapiro in’t allowed visitors.”

“I’m not a visitor. I’m a…” I thought fast. “I’m an adhesion consultant.”

“Oh.” That stopped her in her tracks. She looked me up and down, trying to assess my status. “I thought you was Mrs Brown’s niece. You’ll ‘ave to make an appointment through matron.”

“Of course.” I stood up and put on a Mrs Sinclair-ish voice. “If you could just leave us now. We’ve almost finished our consultation.”

“I’ll have to report it to matron.” She shook her head. “We can’t just ‘ave people wandering in off the streets.”

When we were alone again, Mrs Shapiro gripped my hands.

“You will keep my secret, Georgine?”

“Of course I will.”

“What should I do?”

“Don’t sign anything. Don’t marry Nicky.”

“But if I am married, they will heff to let me go home, isn’t it?”

“I’ll try to get you out.”

“If I will say no to him, he will stop coming. Is better if I say maybe yes and maybe no.” She winked.

“You’re naughty, Mrs Shapiro,” I laughed. “How does he manage to get in? Doesn’t the matron stop him?”

“He told them he is my solicitor.”

“Ah. Clever. But…”

Actually, I thought, what she needs is a proper solicitor.

There was a sudden rush of footsteps and voices in the corridor. I kissed Mrs Shapiro on the cheeks and quickly said goodbye, just as they reached the door. The pink-overalled lady was in front, followed by a big green-cardied woman and a security guard. Their faces were flushed with purpose. But before they could say anything they were distracted by a ghastly scream from down the corridor outside number twenty-three. I turned—we all turned—to see the honker lady waving her hands in the air and yelling, “‘Elp! ‘Elp! There’s a dead body in ‘ere!”

They forgot all about me in the ensuing chaos. I slipped out through the sliding door while someone else was rushing in, and kept my head down as I walked to the bus stop on the Lea Bridge Road. All the way home on the top deck of the bus, I was working out a plan to get Mrs Shapiro out.

A trip to B&Q

N
ext morning, I phoned Ms Baddiel. Amazingly, she answered on the first ring.

“Oh, thank goodness I’ve got hold of you. Something terrible’s happened. Mrs Shapiro’s been kidnapped,” I gabbled. I didn’t want to complicate things by mentioning the body.

“Sssh. Ca-alm down, Mrs Sinclair. Now, take a deep breath for me. Hold. Two—three—four. Breathe out with a sigh. Two—three—four, and rela-ax.”

I did as she instructed. My stomach-knot eased and my fists turned back into hands.

“That’s perfect. Now, you were saying…?”

I tried to explain that Mrs Shapiro had been kidnapped and held against her will until she agreed to sign away her house. I tried to avoid directly accusing Mrs Goodney of theft, but she was more concerned that Mrs Shapiro’s lifestyle choices were being violated.

“There are a number of options open to her. If she is to live at home, the house needs to be made suitable. It’s easy to move a bed downstairs and convert a living room into a bedroom. The problem is usually to create a downstairs bathroom. Alternatively, of course, she could install a lift. Even a stairlift.”

“Mm. Yes. Good idea. I’ve got some men in there at the moment, fixing it up. I could ask…”

“Perfect.”

I tried to picture Mr All and the Uselesses installing a stairlift. Mmm. No.

“There used to be grants available for that kind of work, but unfortunately now it usually has to be self-financed. Has she got any funds, do you know?”

I thought of the receipts from the secondhand traders I’d found in her bureau drawer.

“I’m not sure. I’ll ask her.” Though I knew as sure as hell she wouldn’t tell me. My heart sank. Then I imagined trying to persuade her to have a stairlift installed.

“And we could increase her care package. I take it that worked out all right?”

“Yes. Fine. Fantastic.”

We arranged to meet at the house next week. I wanted time to be sure that the Uselesses had made some progress, and to check that the place was at least habitable. Ms Baddiel undertook to visit Northmere House in the meantime, and to challenge the terms of Mrs Shapiro’s incarceration.

“It’s a violation of human rights,” she said confidently in her peachy voice.

§

On Wednesday afternoon I set out to visit Mrs Shapiro at Northmere House again. I walked down to the Balls Pond Road to get the Number 56, and I must have dozed off on the bus (or sunk into a reverie, as Ms Firestorm would put it) for when I looked out of the window we were already on the Lea Bridge Road, and I realised I’d missed my stop. I rang the bell hastily and raced down the stairs, and when the bus finally came to a halt I found myself standing near a familiar jolly orange-and-grey building. Another branch of B&Q! It must be destiny, I thought.

The B&Q store was tattier than the one at Tottenham and almost empty, silent with a hush of reverence—like a temple, I thought, dedicated to some peculiar male cult. The high ceilings and echoing aisles, the air of solemn devotion, the acolytes walking with bowed heads, the obscure objects of veneration, the mysteries. Apart from me, there was only one other woman in the place, a stunningly pretty Asian girl with a sparkling nose stud, on one of the checkouts. With the air of a slightly bored priestess, she pointed me in the direction of the adhesives on aisle twenty-nine.

Cyanoacrylate AXP-36C. I pulled the crumpled Mrs Brown envelope out of my pocket and started to look at the labels on the packaging. It was easy enough to distinguish between the PVAs, the epoxies and the acrylates, but there didn’t seem to be one with that precise formulation. A number of them carried warnings about misuse. I browsed the packets, looking for the ones with the direst warnings.

After a while, a nice blokey type appeared and asked me if I needed any help. I showed him my paper. He studied it for a few moments with a puzzled frown, then asked, “What’s it for, sweetheart?”