Rebecca's Secrets - Some Extracts
I'm just putting the finishing touches to my first novel, Rebecca’s Secrets – the story of Tommy Angel, an orphan boy growing up in the East End of London in the Fifties, who starts to become curious and opens up a dark box of family secrets. leave me a comment and I’ll let you know when it’s published if you like.
Now I'm a bit nervous about this. It's a first for me.
But I thought I'd show you a few extracts.
You see I'm still editing and I'd value your comments, criticisms and suggestions.
I've got 2 weeks to make changes before publication.
Don't hold back!
Let me know what you think.
- Robert
On 1st January 1956. After weeks of snow, sleet and fog, the first sun of the New Year cut across Eric Street, burning light into the cold shadows. It crept inch by inch, probing one dark place, then the next.
I’d just turned eleven. I don’t remember much about the previous year or the three years before that in the Home. That was another life, like a story about someone else.
Until this day I’d lived unaware. I didn’t live my life – it lived me. But I did know I was different from other kids. There was something secret about me and my family.
That morning I became curious.
That day I started asking questions.
That week I opened up a box full of dark family secrets.
That year I found out who I was.
“Missed me. Hit the lamppost!” I lied.
The ball hit my thigh and bounced straight back to Larry. I rubbed the stinging red ball-print on my leg and hobbled across the street to Viv.
It was freezing cold. The pavement was covered in two inches of hard-packed snow and long icicles hung from the lampposts, smaller ones dripped from the railings.
Eric Street runs south from the Mile End Road – the main artery from the East End to the City of London. That’s where I lived with my Gran, my Granddad (who I called Dad) and Uncle Vinny.
Viv and I huddled together by Mrs. Levy’s railings.
Most of London’s railings had been taken away and melted down for guns for the war, but ours were still intact. Granddad said it was too dangerous to take them from Eric Street because all the drunks would come rolling home from the Wentworth on pay day, and fall down Kutchinski’s airee.
Larry aimed at my legs again and I grabbed the railings and swung my feet into the air. The ball bounced off my bum.
“Hit the railings!” I lied again.
Larry scrabbled for the ball, slipped on the ice and landed on his back. Viv danced over him.
“Can’t catch me – couldn’t catch a flea.”
She was only ten and small for her age, but she was tough and a lot faster than any of the boys.
Larry, still on his back aimed at Viv. He missed. The ball whizzed past her ears and straight at me. I punched it high in the air. We all gaped as it hung for a moment at the top of its flight, and watched it fall straight into Mrs. Levy’s airee. It glanced off her basement windowsill, bounced off the airee wall and hit the lower windowpane dead centre. A crack zipped diagonally across the glass as the ball dropped to the airee floor.
All the terraced houses on the evens side of the street had bay-windowed sitting rooms at ground level and a basement with an open airee protected by the railings.
Our footballs and tennis balls often found their way into neighbours’ airees. Usually we’d ask if we could get the ball and perhaps tidy their airees while we were down there. We knew who would say yes: Mrs. Bresslaw – whose son Bernie was on the telly and Mrs. Kutchinski – who was always smiling and Errol’s mum, Mrs. White.
Mrs. Kutchinski had the biggest grin in the East End. We’d clear the litter passers-by had dropped and she’d give us bread and dripping.
Mrs. Bresslaw liked us to water her basement window boxes. She gave us orange juice and potato latkes. For some reason she called me “Poor Tommy” and while we’d stuff ourselves on her doorstep, she’d mumble “Poor lost babies. Poor lost babies.” and shake her head. We thought she was mad, but anyone who made latkes that good must be harmless.
Mrs. White gave us crispy spicy things that burned your mouth. Larry took one home for his dog Prince. The dog swallowed it whole and charged round the house yelping. We always said “Thanks, Mrs. White – we’ll save them for later.” and then we gave them to kids we didn’t like.
If a ball fell into a grumpy neighbour’s airee, we didn’t ask – we just climbed over for it. Sometimes we got caught, but we usually got away with apologies or lies – like today.
“Quick. Get the ball,” Viv said, “before Old Levy finds out or we’ll be for it! But do it quiet!”
I climbed over Mrs. Levy’s railings, hung down as low as I could, pushed away from the wall and dropped the last two feet. There was just the quietest “pling” as my plimsoles hit the ground.
I heard a loud “whoosh” behind me as Mrs. Levy pushed the window up. It stuck about halfway, like most sash windows in our street. She parted the lace curtains, bent down and stuck her head out.
“Sorry, Mrs. Levy,” I said, “I did knock on your door three times, honest, Mrs. Levy, but there was no answer and I knew Mr. Levy was at the shop and I thought you must’ve had a bad night what with your rheumatism and I didn’t want to wake you up.”
Mrs. Levy squeezed an arm out and waved a skinny finger at me. “You know God sees everything and punishes dirty little boys who get into sin and mischief!”
I looked up at the cracked pane above her head and then at the sky and I held my breath and waited for the window to shatter or for God to strike me down. It was the first blue sky in ages, even bluer against the white of the snowy rooftops. The clouds were small and puffy, flying fast. It made me dizzy to look.
I waited. There was no crash of glass, no thunder and no lightning. He didn’t strike me down. So Mrs. Levy was wrong about God! Perhaps they all were....
We ran across the road to Gran's – and I threw the ball down the airee. It landed on the huge pile of rubbish that came halfway up the basement window. Larry and Viv climbed down and pretended to search for the ball. Viv, pushed rubbish away with both arms looking like a deep sea diver doing breast stroke, saying “Hummmm ummmmm umm ummm um.”
I jumped up the steps, opened the street door and shouted for Gran. I waited while she slowly negotiated the dark passage, puffing and grumbling. She walked with a stick and her knees were a long way apart so she rocked her whole weight slowly from side to side, like a big ship on a swollen sea.
First to break into the sharp sunlight was her paisley pinafore inflated by an ample belly and bosom. Then the light caught her nose, her glasses, her knitted brows, and her turned-down mouth. She squinted in the glare and shaded her eyes with her free hand.
“Now what do you want?” she asked, as if I had made her sail that stormy passage a hundred times already.
Her face was severe, with a fixed frown and a lower lip pushed up in the middle and down at the corners like Churchill’s fight-them-on-the-beaches face. It was a mask of disapproval.
She was called Rebecca, but she wasn’t like Rebecca in the bible who was beautiful and hospitable. No, she seemed to be always grumpy and critical – impossible to please – I had tried for years. Nothing was right. Whatever I did, she would say I was lazy, thoughtless and forgetful. Mostly she called me meshugener – crazy or a luftmensh – a dreamy head-in-the-clouds – that was her favourite word for me.
It wasn’t just me; she had a bad word for everyone in the family – usually in Yiddish. Her children were all ungrateful. Aunt Hannah was stuck up; Aunt Miriam was a klogmuter – a misery; Aunt Stella was conniving; Uncle Samuel was a shmegegi – a clown; Uncle Solomon was a kolboynik – a know-it-all and Vinny was toig ahf kapores – good-for-nothing.
The in-laws were all unworthy; Aunt Marlene was flighty; Aunt Nina was draikop – scatterbrained, Uncle Arthur was grober – an oaf and Aunt Hannah’s Harry was alter kaker – an old fart.
The neighbours didn’t escape her judgment either. Mrs. Bresslaw was toffee-nosed because her boy was on the telly; Mrs. Kutchinski was filthy; Mrs. Levy was yachneh – a load mouthed gossip. Mrs. White merited extra malice because she was a foreigner and a swartzer, and her house was painted daft colours and she left rubbish around and gave the street a bad name. The rest of the street were ganef – rogues, rascals and thieves.
“Well… what do you want, luftmensh?”
As she glared down from the top step, I realized that she looked and sounded just like Gilbert Harding – that grumpy old man on What’s My Line. He always looked like he was about to do a big burp. He did an advertisement “I have indigestion but I don’t suffer from it.”
“Have you got indigestion, Gran?”
“What?” Her frown deepened into a scowl – which was normally enough to shut me up. But not today. Today was different.
“Why do you always look so grumpy, Gran?”
I took a step back. God had let me off this morning for two little lies to Larry and Mrs. Levy’s potential manslaughter, but Gran was more formidable than the Almighty, less forgiving, closer and quicker to anger. She raised her stick and shook it at me.
“I can’t help what I look like. You were born with a smile on your face, Tommy, and you don’t have a care in the world. I was born into hardship and pain and my life has been filled with worry and heartache and that’s what’s written over my face and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
So, I thought, it’s not all my fault then! Gran was born miserable – nothing to do with me. It was… a sickness, like indigestion. She was born grumpy and she got grumpier, so… no matter how I tried – and I did try – I would never-ever be able to do anything right. She told me off all the time, made me feel guilty, ashamed – whatever I said, whatever I did, but I couldn’t possibly be bad all the time.
So, I thought, it can’t be me – it must be her – it’s just her way of being in this world. From that day, although she gave me plenty of headaches with her constant complaints, I never took her so seriously again and I mostly ignored her judgments. I decided God could be my judge, and, as I found out that morning, God was a mate. He didn’t strike me dead down Mrs. Levy’s airee, so He probably liked boys, and if I did anything really bad, He’d let me know. So far He hadn’t complained.
“Our ball’s down the airee, Gran.” I said.
“So, now you want me to climb down and get it for you?” she shrugged and opened her hands, palms up looking up to God for sympathy.
“No, course not, but we can’t find it in the rubbish. What if we clear the rubbish out?”
“There’s no rubbish down there. I don’t keep rubbish. Its just things that’ll come in handy – one day.” She said.
Gran would win the prize for the most things-that’ll-come-in-handy-one-day in the street. It wasn’t just our stuff – people walking by would throw their rubbish on top of ours – newspapers, old comics, sweet wrappers and fag ends. The mountain of rubbish had been there for years and years and I thought there must be some treasures buried in that pile. I’d often ask if I could clear it, but she always said no.
I told her there were rats in the airee, but she didn’t believe me.
“Honest, Gran, Ronny Needleman saw a rat when he came round the other day. He said it was brown, about a foot long, with a long tail.”
“No,” she said, “We don’t have rats. I keep my house spotless. That boy Ronny exaggerates.”
She was right – Ronny did exaggerate. In fact he told bloody great lies and boasted much of the time, but this time he was telling the truth.
“But Gran, I know there’s rats. I can hear ‘em.”
I slept in the basement and I heard the rats at night, scrabbling in the airee, scratching at the window. They made a different noise to mice.
“You’re just imagining things like you always do. Half your life you live inside your head. There’s nothing in that airee and I don’t want you poking around down there. No. You leave it be.”
She turned to Viv and Larry. “Get your ball and get out.” She said flatly,
“But Gran!”
“Don’t you ‘But Gran’ me. If I let you do it you’ll only fall down, break your leg and I’ll have to take you up the hospital and I’ll be in trouble with the Welfare.”
