Barry Maitland - The Marx Sisters

Sylvia roared with laughter.

‘She looks at me carefully after she’s told me this, and says what do I think? Well, I told her. Let Terry look after his own cash-flow problems, and keep the house free of debt, the way her husband left it to her. She seemed quite relieved, I think. It had been worrying her.’

‘Someone else said that Meredith had seemed worried about something lately. Would that be the reason, do you think?’

‘I don’t know, Kathy. I hadn’t really seen so much of her lately, to speak to. She seemed to keep a bit more to herself.’

‘Did everyone like her really, Sylvia? I mean, after someone dies, everyone says nice things about them, but no one gets through a lifetime without falling out with a few people. Particularly in a close-knit street like this, I should think.’

‘Well, Meredith was a very gregarious sort of person, and couldn’t help herself getting involved in other people’s lives, especially if they were in trouble and needed a helping hand. I suppose sometimes people like that are a bit annoying. I mean, when you’re not in trouble they still like to come round and organize you. I can still remember one day ages ago when Mr Hepple offered to take Meredith and me out to the new shopping centre at Brent Cross for the afternoon. As soon as we drove off she started, “Oh, you’d go this way to Euston Road, would you, Mr Hepple?” and “Turn left here, George” and “I always think the Edgware Road is better than the Finchley Road, but you know best, I suppose”. Mr Hepple didn’t say a word, but when we got home, he said to me, “She’s a wonderful woman in many ways, Sylvia, but that is the first and last time that I will ever have her in my car.” ’

Kathy joined Sylvia’s laughter. ‘Yes, I have an uncle like that.’

‘Top you up, Kathy? Yes, come on, you’re not driving and you’re off duty now. As I said, I don’t mind drinking alone, but it feels bad to drink with someone who isn’t.’

‘All right.’ It had been a long day, and more of a strain doing it with Brock alongside her than she’d realized. ‘Just a small one, though, Sylvia. I have to go out tonight.’

‘Oh. Someone nice?’

‘I think so.’

‘Lucky you. Maybe he’s got a nice older brother going spare. Actually, I don’t think I’d know what to do with one any more.’ They laughed again. ‘No, I’m looking forward to moving down to Tonbridge when Hepple, Tyas amp; Turton closes down. I’ve got friends down there who play eighteen holes every day, 365 days a year, rain, hail or shine.’

Kathy smiled, visualizing four ladies of Sylvia’s build ploughing round the fairways, year after year.

‘You won’t miss this place?’

‘Oh yes, but time for a change.’

‘Did Meredith ever have a more serious tiff with anyone, though?’

Sylvia thought. ‘I suppose the thing with Adam Kowalski did get a bit tense. Have you met him? No. Well, they’ve gone now, although I did see him up here at the weekend, come to think of it. Still clearing things from his shop, I suppose.

‘Anyway, it was a day when some royalty or other was getting married or something, and there was a street party in Jerusalem Lane. The bunting was out, and there was music and they were doing their polkas and mazurkas out there in the square. Meredith was talking to Marie Kowalski, Adam’s wife, who I think might have had one or two vodkas. Anyway, Meredith was going on about how wonderful her granddaughters were, with Alex going to university, and Marie comes out with the fact that at one time Adam had been the youngest and most brilliant professor in the University of Cracow, which was the second-oldest university in Europe, or something like that. So Meredith says, why is he selling second-hand books now then, and Marie says that he had been made professor just before the war, but during the war terrible things happened, and afterwards things were such a mess, he never got back to the university, he had enemies in the new government, and eventually they left and came over here.’

‘Well, of course Meredith wouldn’t leave it at that. She says, well, if he’s such a brilliant scientist or whatever he was, he should have been in a university here, and his talents should have been recognized. She started talking about writing to the newspapers about it. Well, Marie started to get worried at this point apparently, and tried to get Meredith to let it alone, but Meredith starts saying how she’ll get Mr Hepple to have a word with a judge he knows who’s the chancellor of some university or other.

‘Well, eventually, when Marie can see that things are getting out of hand, she confesses to Meredith that the reason Adam was kicked out of the university was that during the war he’d been forced to collaborate with the Germans. Apparently they had told him that either he collaborate with them or else Marie would be taken away to the camps, and so all through the war he had been reporting to the Gestapo on his students.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Yes. After the war the Poles didn’t punish him, but he found he couldn’t get work, and the whole family was completely ostracized. It’s a very sad story. But the terrible thing was that Meredith still wouldn’t leave it alone. She thought it was shocking that they should go on being punished for something that had happened so long ago. She wanted to get him the recognition he deserved for his early genius, and started telling the story to other people. Adam was appalled. I mean, it might seem like it happened a long time ago to us, but to some of the people here, it’s still very fresh. Mrs Rosenfeldt, for instance, she was in Auschwitz. She lost all her family there. The Kowalskis had come here to escape from everyone who knew their story, and now Meredith was opening it all up again. It must have seemed like a nightmare. Adam was devastated. He pleaded with her to be quiet. I believe he threatened her, too. Her sisters came to her defence, and then his friends pitched in.’

‘The Croatia Club?’

‘Yes, Konrad Witz mainly, who had the camera shop on the corner up by the tube station, and other old drinking mates. They were a bit abusive to the sisters for a while, I believe.’

‘Mrs Rosenfeldt called them Nazis.’

‘Oh, no. I mean most of the people who have come here since the war have been running away from communist countries, so they don’t like Peg and Eleanor’s politics, but they don’t go around painting swastikas on the synagogue or anything like that! But they are a funny lot, you know, so intense. They’d give each other their last pound, and then have a raging argument over some crown prince or general or something who died fifty years ago. They forget nothing. Did Mrs Rosenfeldt tell you about her dog?’

‘No, I didn’t know she has one.’

‘She hasn’t, not for twenty years. But the story of Mrs Rosenfeldt’s dog is one of the sagas of the Lane. Are you sure you want to hear it?’

Kathy smiled. ‘Go on.’

‘Mrs Rosenfeldt has been here longer than anyone. She met her husband in one of those refugee camps after the war and they came over here soon after, so by the time the others arrived, the ones escaping from the communists, she’d already been here a good few years. I can remember her quite well when I first started to work here for Mr Hepple, in 1969. She was a widow by that stage, and she used to walk up and down the Lane, chatting to everyone, pretty much as if she owned the place, and with her she would take her dog. He was one of those little pugs, you know? The kind that looks as if it’s walked into a brick wall.

‘It was a snappy little beast, and it seemed to have a knack of sharing its owner’s prejudices about people, giving the ones that Mrs Rosenfeldt didn’t like a hard time. It would bark at them and bite their heels, and leave little messages on their doorsteps. Mr Witz especially. It used to drive him mad, stepping out of his shop and straight into one of the dog’s little messages. Well, one day someone left a message for Mrs Rosenfeldt. She opened the shop door one morning, and there was the dog, dead. It might have been run over, but Mr Stwosz next door saw it, and he said it looked more like as if someone had whacked it, here’-she pointed to her forehead-‘with a hammer. Poor Mrs Rosenfeldt. Everyone felt terrible for her, although there weren’t many people sorry to see the back of the dog.’