Free She's Leaving Home by Edwina Currie Page A

regular, in a red coat, as stout and florid as a jar of jam. The racket in the shop was deafening as bodies shoved and shouted.
    ‘What can I get you, Mrs Bloom?’
    ‘A carton of smetana, a dozen bagels, and a quarter of smoked salmon.’
    ‘Bagels over there on the rack – help yourself. Big carton or small?’ The soured cream was a favourite over fruit, or eaten greedily by itself, sweetened with brown sugar.
    ‘My doctor says I shouldn’t – make it a small one. Full up, mind. And take the salmon from the centre, not the end – I don’t want any skin or brown bits.’
    Mr Feinstein loomed close, stropping the thin blade of the salmon knife. ‘I’ll do this, Helen. Morning, Sylvia. How much did you say you wanted – half a pound?’
    Sylvia, hands full of bagels, dimpled immediately. ‘Morry, you’re a card. You know I live by myself. For what would I be wanting half a pound of salmon?’
    Feinstein grinned, half roguish, half shy. In the shop as proprietor he felt confident with women, could tease them and bask briefly in their admiration. It was a totally different matter away from his beloved almond biscuits and Rakusen’s Matzos. With any female he met outside he would become tongue-tied, would not know what to say, would shuffle his feet and stare at the ground, then flee back to the sanctuary of his solitary bed and sigh with relief at his deliverance.
    There had been another time, of course. There had been Rosetta, as timid as himself; he had been a gawky youth, pushed into early marriage by his parents who wanted the joy, they said, of grandchildren, to see their seed sown. Rosetta and he had obliged though the whole exercise had been deeply embarrassing to both. The result was Jerry, who was supposed to come and help when the shop was busy but who frequently had better things to do. The degree to which the pregnancy and birth had weakened Rosetta’s already frail constitution had been apparent to nobody; when she had fainted one day after taking the boy to school it had been a shock for which neither was prepared. Heart disease, the doctor said. Must have had rheumatic fever as a child, though her mother stoutly denied it: for a girl with such a condition, had it been known, would not have been marriageable.
    And so one cold winter day his wife had collapsed and been rushed to hospital, and with a husky whisper had slipped away from him a few days later.
    Her death had come when the boy was about eight. The child’s grandparents had rallied round and the boy had been dragged up, one way or another, in the homes of various relatives nearby. In his teens Jerry had elected to live permanently with his father, more for the freedom that promised than through any excess of affection. Nevertheless Mr Feinstein was grateful. The boy’s presence gave him an excuse to love something, and the occasional glimpses in his son’s face of Rosetta, her wistful smile, her large dark eyes, bound him to his wilful offspring as nothing else could.
    That Jerry lived at home in the flat over the shop gave his father another useful shield, this time against the army of unattached women who wanted to improve on his widower state. Sylvia wasone, a divorcée, and not at all to his taste. She claimed to be his age – fortyish – but had a daughter much older than Jerry, so that seemed unlikely. She simpered, she wriggled, she batted her eyelashes, but Mr Feinstein kept his eyes on the razor-sharp knife as it slid beneath his fingers over the pink oiliness of the salmon. He wished she would stop. Yet his shopkeeper mentality would keep pushing itself to the fore. Sylvia was a wealthy woman and would not miss a few shillings. If by a little harmless flirtation he could persuade her to spend more, particularly on the most expensive perishable items in the shop, then he would not hesitate. And it was part of her trade as a matchmaker, to get him into the mood. It was a game played out every occasion they met. In truth both