The Leaving Of Liverpool (16 page)

Tamara made fun of him. ‘You’re almost excited as when I was expecting Larisa,’ she said. ‘Nowadays, she could mention Larisa without dissolving into tears.

Anne’s baby arrived in the middle of the night. It was Levon who heard her loud, panicky cry and went to see if she was all right, to find her clutching her stomach, saying, ‘I have this awful pain, Lev. I feel as if I’m about to break in two.’

He’d woken Tamara, thrown on some clothes, and raced to fetch Mrs Sarkadi, a big Hungarian woman with a tough face and a kind smile, who lived in East 19th Street, two streets from his own. Her use of English was perfect, but her accent was so thick she was hard to understand.

Mrs Sarkadi had returned with him, examined the girl, who by then was in enormous pain, and said the baby wasn’t due just yet. Now she and Tamara were doing things in the kitchen, and Levon was in Anne’s room, stroking her brow, holding her hand, telling her everything was going to be fine, though what did he know about it? Did she realize what was happening? he wondered.

She was muttering something under her breath and he bent to listen. ‘I don’t want to go back,’ she was saying over and over. ‘I don’t want to go back.’

‘You’re not going anywhere, my angel,’ he told her. ‘You’re staying here - for ever, if that’s what you want.’

‘I don’t want to go back,’ she said again. His words had clearly not penetrated her fuzzy brain. Suddenly, she sat up and cried, ‘Where’s Mollie? I want Mollie.’

‘Mollie’s not here, darling.’ He held her shoulders, thinking how thin they were, and laid her down. ‘But
I’m
here. This is Lev, who loves you and will make sure you don’t come to any harm.’

She grabbed his hand and held it against her cheek. ‘Lev,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Lev.’

Mrs Sarkadi came in with a bowl of steaming water, Tamara behind carrying an armful of old towels and sheets. ‘We’ll see to her now, Lev,’ Tamara said.

Levon spent the next hour attempting to read - later, he couldn’t remember a single word - drinking black coffee, looking out of the window at the lights of New York, going over the events that had led him to this strange and wonderful place, and listening to the cries and moans coming from Anne’s room that ate away at his heart.

Eventually, there came a different cry, not Anne, but from a baby. Levon positioned himself outside the door of her room so that he would be there when it opened and Tamara came out to tell him if it was a boy or a girl. The baby continued to cry and he stamped his feet impatiently. A boy would be called John, a girl Elizabeth, assuming that Anne herself didn’t suggest a name, which he felt was most unlikely. Tamara had wanted to give the child an Armenian name but Levon claimed that wouldn’t be fair. ‘Anne isn’t Armenian,’ he’d argued. ‘Her child should be given a name she might have chosen herself.’

The door opened and Tamara appeared with a tiny baby wrapped in the shawl she had knitted. ‘Lev, this is John,’ she said, her eyes like two bright stars in her excited face. ‘I always wanted us to have a boy.’

Levon looked down at the little, crumpled, bad-tempered face. ‘Why is he so red?’

‘Lots of babies are red when they’re first born.’

‘He’s awfully small.’

Tamara laughed. ‘What did you expect, Lev, an elephant? All babies are small. Mrs Sarkadi thinks he weighs about five pounds. It’s a good thing for Anne he’s no bigger, otherwise she’d have had an even worse time.’

‘How is she?’ He longed to go into the room and see for himself.

‘Exhausted. Mrs Sarkadi tried to give her the baby, but she turned away. I doubt she’ll want anything to do with him.’ Tamara didn’t seem upset about it. She was holding the child possessively, like a mother, as if it were
hers
.

‘I wonder who the father is?’ Levon mused. ‘Would he be interested to know he has a son?’

‘Do we really care, Lev?’ Tamara raised her fine eyebrows.

‘I suppose not, no.’

Mrs Sarkadi emerged to say in her rather charming way that Anne was a delicately built young lady, but very fit and strong, and should be left to sleep for as long as she wished. ‘I’ll come and zee ’er again tomorrow,’ she said.

Levon thanked and paid her, then asked if Anne was sleeping now.

‘Not yet, but any minute.’ She pronounced ‘minute’ as if it meant small.

Levon showed her out. Tamara was preparing a weak solution of the formula she’d bought, while John lay in a basket on the kitchen table. Levon bent over him, watching, fascinated, as the child yawned extravagantly and bunched his tiny fists into balls. He poked him gently in the stomach, but the child just yawned again. Tamara gave him a glowering look, so Levon left the kitchen and went to see Anne.

She lay on the bed, eyes closed, but somehow he could tell she wasn’t asleep. He sat on the edge of the bed and she said, ‘Is that you, Lev?’

‘Yes, darling, it’s me.’

‘I know what’s just happened, but I don’t want to know it. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘Yes, I do.’ At least, he thought he did.

‘I’m not quite as stupid as you think, Lev.’ She still hadn’t opened her eyes.

‘I’ve never thought you stupid, Anne darling, but you must admit you are a very strange young lady.’

‘I’ve always been strange, at least so people used to say.’ Her voice was a soft, feathery whisper. There was a long silence and he thought she had really gone to sleep. She spoke when he got up to leave. ‘I love New York, Lev.’

‘So do I, Anne.’

‘At first, I hated it when I saw it from the boat. I thought it was a dream, a really bad one, but now I never want to leave.’

‘Then you never will.’

‘Goodnight, Lev.’

Levon softly closed the door and looked at his watch. It was early morning, almost five o’clock, and New York was preparing itself for another day. He changed into what Tamara called his ‘lawyer suit’: dark-grey flannel with the latest narrow lapels, sloping pockets and narrow trousers. He found Tamara in the sitting room changing John’s diaper.

‘It didn’t really need changing. I just wanted to do it for the first time.’ She smiled at him. ‘Isn’t he beautiful, Lev?’

‘Beautiful.’ Levon nodded, though secretly he considered the child, with his screwed-up red face, rather ugly. He had massive balls and a tiny penis. His legs were stick-thin and very active.

‘He has blue eyes,’ Tamara noted.

‘They might change,’ Levon pointed out.

‘I know.’ She noticed what he was wearing. ‘Are you going to work this early?’

‘I thought I might. I need to get started on a few cases.’ He gestured at the baby. ‘I feel I can now that this is over.’

‘I’m relieved it’s over, too.’ She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘We’ve got a son, Lev. It was the last thing I expected when we came to America, to have a son. We’re so lucky. Once I used to think we were cursed, but now I realize how lucky we are.’

Chapter 6

Peggy Perlmann’s Academy of Drama, Dance and Song was situated on top of a baker’s shop on Hester Street, halfway between Little Italy and Chinatown. The studio comprised a large room that had once been two, with a ballet bar at one end and a mirror covering the entire wall at the other. The only furniture was a small, upright piano. It was tucked between the windows on which the academy’s name had been painted in black and gold.

When Levon and Anne arrived, it was early, barely nine o’clock, and half a dozen garishly dressed young people were sitting in a circle on the floor talking animatedly, accompanied by a great deal of dramatic waving of arms.

Peggy had been born in New York and had the accent to prove it. Half-Irish, half-Jewish, she was at least six feet tall and had danced in the chorus of every major theatre in the state. ‘Trouble was,’ she told Levon when she showed him and Anne into a small room that seemed to double as a kitchen and an office, ‘I started out at thirteen, but five years later I was taller than all the girls and most of the men. I tried pretending I was a man for a while, but it didn’t work.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Levon. Peggy had the lushest lips, the bluest eyes, and the longest, most shapely legs he’d ever seen. Nobody in his or her right mind would have taken her for a man. She was seated behind a table that held a typewriter, untidy heaps of paper, equally untidy heaps of photographs, and a collection of cracked cups. Her wonderful red hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with a series of colourful combs and slides. She was made up as if she were about to go on stage: black lines around the eyes, blue shadow on the lids, lashes stiff with mascara, and a mouth that reminded Levon of an over-ripe plum. She wore black tights, green shorts, and a knitted top covered in snags and darns. Her high-heeled shoes looked a size larger than his sensible black ones.

‘The hours are nine till four,’ she informed them. ‘Some evenings are involved: I’ll explain that later. You can take just one course, or all three. Some kids just take the dancing, the singing, or the drama. Most take the whole damn lot. At the end of each term, we give concerts for the parents - no friends allowed, ’cos we don’t have the room. We do two types of dancing: ballet and tap. As you can hear, today we’re doing tap.’

Since they’d arrived, someone had started to play the out-of-tune piano with enormous enthusiasm and the young people were pounding the floor so hard Levon half expected the building to collapse. ‘What would you like to do, Anne?’ he asked.

‘Everything,’ Anne said promptly. He saw her feet were tapping in time to the music.

‘Just a minute, honey,’ Peggy said in her loud, raucous voice. ‘I don’t take just any old body in the academy. You have to audition first. There’s some kids who couldn’t dance to save their grannie from being eaten by the big, bad wolf, and others whose singing sounds like the whistle on a kettle. I have my reputation to consider. Producers come here all the time if they want a kid in one of their shows.’ She transferred her stern gaze to Levon. ‘Have you seen
Murder on the Yukon
, Mr Zarian?’ When Levon looked at her blankly, she went on, ‘It’s a movie. A young man called Billy Berry has a supporting role. Billy was one of my drama students the year I opened in nineteen fifteen.’

Levon confessed he’d never been to the movies. ‘My wife and I kept meaning to,’ he excused himself lamely.

‘The whole academy goes once a week, usually Tuesdays - it’s included in the fees - and we visit the theatre on the first of every month. It’s stimulating for the kids, gives them an idea of what to aspire to. Next week, we’re going to see
The Ten Commandments
directed by Cecil B. DeMille. It’s in Technicolor, the first of its kind.’

‘I’d love to see it, Lev,’ Anne said breathlessly.

‘First of all, honey, I suggest your pop goes downstairs and has a coffee in the baker’s - try their do’nuts while you’re at it, Mr Zarian, they’ll make your teeth melt - while I see how little Annie does on the dance floor. Then she can sing us a song. You can come back in half an hour.’

 

The do’nuts were delicious. Levon ate three before deciding enough was enough. He could easily have eaten more, but had been putting on weight since he’d exchanged driving a cab for sitting in an office. In the cab, he’d stopped for the occasional coffee. In the office, he ate at MacCready’s, a diner across the street that served the juiciest hamburgers imaginable, or at more salubrious places if he was taking a client to lunch - or the client was taking him.

By now he was making three times as much as he’d done before, a sum that would inevitably increase when he was doing more business. Tamara was already talking about moving from the apartment to a house with a yard for John to play in. ‘Brooklyn or Queens,’ she’d suggested.

‘We’ll see when the time comes,’ Levon murmured. John was only six weeks old and couldn’t sit up unsupported, let alone play in a yard. He liked living in Manhattan and didn’t want to leave.

Tamara was so absorbed with John it was almost as if she’d forgotten Levon and Anne existed. She took the baby for long walks and was thrilled when strangers spoke to her and assumed she was John’s mother. Although she was forty-six, she still looked capable of having children. There’d been a fierce argument when she’d wanted to register the baby with her and Levon as the parents.

‘He may as well be ours,’ she pouted when Levon pointed out that Anne was the mother. ‘She shows no interest, never so much as looks at him.’

‘She might feel differently when she’s older,’ he said coldly. ‘It would be like stealing another woman’s child. And, even if Anne doesn’t care, John can’t be brought up without being told at some time in his life that we’re not his parents. It would be extremely deceitful not to tell him the truth, Tamara,’ he added rather more gently when he saw the disappointment on her face.

So John was registered as having a mother called Anne Murray, the address the Grammercy Park apartment, and the father ‘Unknown’. Tamara secreted the certificate in the drawer that held all their other important papers. ‘We’ll tell him when he’s twenty-one,’ she said, ‘and just hope he doesn’t find out before.’

Time was passing. Levon looked at his watch, then at the do-nuts behind the glass-fronted counter, and managed to resist buying another. It was almost half an hour since he’d left Anne with the statuesque Peggy Perlmann. He left the baker’s and went through the narrow door that led to the academy, up the stairs to where the pianist - a tiny old woman who required two cushions on the stool in order to reach the keys - was playing a lively tune that made Levon want to snap his fingers. Anne was at the back of the crowd of dancers, tapping away in her little black boots as if she’d been doing it all her life.

Peggy saw him watching and came towards him, grinning from ear to ear. She grabbed his arm and led him into the kitchen that was also an office, saying loudly, ‘She’s a natural. Has she had lessons before?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. I must explain,’ he went on hurriedly, ‘that she’s not my daughter, but the daughter of a friend, an Irish friend. His wife died and he went bankrupt at the same time, so he sent her to us - my wife and I, that is - to look after. Her name is Anne Murray.’ It was a just about credible lie, but there had to be a reason why Anne spoke with an Irish accent, while his was Eastern European. Peggy, however, either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.