home. All over the East End the same notice written in chalk had appeared on pavements and walls.
“Everybody to Aldgate on 4 October 1:00 p.m.”
Early on Sunday morning Sarah announced to her mother that she was feeling cooped up. There was little likelihood of the baby appearing for several days yet, and Sarah always went out on a Sunday. This Sunday was no different. She was going for a stroll.
At first Rachel had been adamant that Sarah was going nowhere. “Over my dead body you are going out in your condition, my girl,” she had said through a mouthful of one of next door’s eggs. But Sarah had inherited her mother’s obstinacy and was hearing none of these objections.
“If you must know I am going to Gardiner’s to buy Nat a tie for when he becomes a father,” she replied. “You can come with me or stay put, it’s up to you, Mum.”
Gardiner’s department store was known by everyone in the East End as “the Harrods of the East,” and no other shop would be good enough for Nat’s paternal tie.
“Whatever will Nat say if anything happens to you Sarah? Tell me that?” Rachel asked, pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot.
“Nat and Dad do not need to know where I am going. There is a sale on at Gardiner’s and a special Sunday opening for two hours this morning. I can be up there by ten and be back home by after eleven.”
Rachel sipped her tea. She could not allow her daughter to go out on her own but realised there was no dissuading her from abandoning the expedition. Rachel was a woman generally possessed of profound common sense but had never been able to refuse her daughter anything. She tried to convince herself that on a day when the perils of being Jewish, female and pregnant were at their most heightened, her presence would be protection enough.
Standing up Rachel reached for her coat. “Right, my girl. We better get going then if we are to be back before any trouble starts.”
Sarah stood up and hugged her mother.
As far as Simon and Nat were concerned the two women were going round the corner to Victoria Park. What with the days drawing in and the October winds about to sharpen their bite, mother and daughter planned to take advantage of an unusually balmy autumn day. Even so, Nat did his best to forbid them both from going. “You tell them, Simon, there is madness in the air.” But neither woman paid him any attention.
“My advice is to give up on them, Nat,” Simon said. “Ill-advised is a man who challenges the will of a determined wife,” he said, returning to the betting pages of the newspaper. But Nat was not yet ready for defeat, warning Rachel and Sarah that he was prepared to restrain them physically from leaving the house.
“Look here,” Rachel said pulling on her gloves, “I’m telling you straight, Nat, you must not worry about us getting caught up in this march. It’s not going to come within miles of us, and anyway nothing is supposed to start till this afternoon, two o’clock at the earliest. Let the poor girl have a break, for pity’s sake. Your wife is about to spend the rest of her days tethered to a pram. God in heaven, Nat, do you honestly think that I, Rachel, her mother, a future grandmother, no less, am going to let Sarah come to any harm?”
“Well, make sure you are back by noon, that’s all I am asking,” Nat said with a sigh, smiling at the familiar obstinacy of his mother-in-law as, putting on a convincing show of being affronted, Rachel ushered her swollen daughter out into the street.
While the women were out Simon sat in the parlour, listening to the news bulletins on the wireless, the sound turned up at deafening volume, The Jewish Chronicle lying open across his large stomach. Nat had finished catching up with yesterday’s Times, collected first thing from his butler friend, even though it had been a Sunday, and made himself and his father-in-law a hefty chicken sandwich, which they ate on their laps, before falling into a Sunday afternoon doze.
“Things don’t sound too good up at Aldgate,” Simon said a while later, gesturing towards the wireless. “Shouldn’t Rachel and Sarah be back by now?”
Both men looked at each other, all of a sudden concerned. But just then there was a double rap at the front door and