Forever Torn

C14: Blood and Water (1/2)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Blood and Water

The summer of 1937 was business as usual for the poor folk of East London – some lived below the poverty line and others made do. It would be trite and inaccurate to describe the lives of everyone as a cycle of drudgery and misery; the truth is that there's a lot of accuracy in the old saying 'poor but happy.' And while some worked hard, they played hard as well and enjoyed life, while striving to improve upon it.

For a bright young lad like Harry, this was especially true. Since leaving school he had worked hard but also enjoyed the company of his extended family, friends and grasped whatever leisure pursuits there were to be had, in both hands and with a cheery smile on his face. His attitude was one of 'can do' and he looked for better jobs with better wages, all the while not neglecting his family, spiritual and community activities and so his was a well rounded enjoyable life.

As a Jewish teenager in London of the 1930's he was reasonably well insulated from the darker side of life due to his immersion in social and work activities being mainly within the Jewish community or the wider immigrant community where he didn't obviously stand out as anything other than a boy who had come over on the boat from Eastern Europe. Forays on work errands to the West End and other parts of the city hadn't brought him into any great conflict with non Jews except on a few odd occasions when his accent had almost gotten him into bother.

He was aware of antisemitism and had experienced it from time to time, but so rarely that it hardly made an impact on his life although in recent times he had been less blasé about rushing through life without a care in the world and slightly more concerned about stories of the fascists and anti Semites out and about in the same parts of the city that he frequented.

This was less than a year after the infamous Battle of Cable Street where Oswald Mosley had led a march through the East End only to have his Black-shirts clash with thousands of anti fascist demonstrators and the majority of these who engaged the Black-shirts were Jews or Irish.

That particular Sunday, Harry had been up to Clapton to visit Cyril but he had received details and excitable descriptions of the three-way clash between fascists, police and protesters from some friends who had gone up to observe the proceedings and had been sensible enough to stay on the fringes while this was all going on.

That following Sunday in October of 1936, Harry had passed on the details to his brother and it was Cyril's offhand remarks about both sides being as much a rabble as the other, that had got him thinking. Evering Road was an oasis of calm compared even to his own street but whereas there was always the possibility of something like the Cable Street fight spilling over to Hunton Street if the Black-shirts decided to take another route in the future – and it WAS near enough the thorough-fare of Brick Lane to make that possible – it was hard to imagine anything so un-genteel happening in the leafy quiet of Cyril's middle class paradise.

Looking at the divergent paths their lives had taken, this is what stands out:

Harry had through his own labours and determination earned enough to enjoy a simple life, not too reliant on others and when the money ran short he made his own entertainments and lived life according to his own terms as much as he was able to. In that respect he was very much like his father and Dovid would certainly have been proud of his son and they were similar in another aspect.

Like his father before him, Harry Gilvicious was an observant Jew but it didn't dominate his life when other concerns came along. Dovid as we may recall had mixed with all kinds in the army of the Tsar and later on before meeting Golde in Ufa and he had adapted to setting aside the outward trappings and contented himself to reflect privately within his own soul about his own religious beliefs at times when he thought it appropriate to think about them.

Harry's Grandparents were orthodox, his Grandfather passionately (but not extremely) so and while he was around them, he respected their wishes absolutely but he had fortunately (he reckoned) never been required to dress in an orthodox fashion as a child by his parents and neither did his Zaida insist on it when he came to London.

He of course observed the trappings such as laying tefillin and wearing a kippah (or kappel) on his head but did so only at home, out with his grandparents and at services. At work and out and about he went round with no such obvious accoutrements of faith and so didn't look as obviously Jewish as he did obviously Eastern European and even that he could downplay by not opening his mouth to speak and this was most definitely why he had avoided some potentially dangerous situations with racists.

By contrast Cyril was brought up in the high end of the wealthy middle classes, WAS an orthodox Jew not so much in appearance, but in belief and attitude AND in the circles he mixed, he would never even dream of encountering anything so uncouth as bigotry and the closest he got to such types was presumably being driven past them in his adoptive father's car with the window tightly secured and sealing him off from any vulgar lowlifes he might chance to be in the proximity of.

Cyril's food, clothes and surroundings were the best money could buy – his education was top notch and in addition to all the opportunities that could be had in life, he expected and received luxuries the likes of which Harry would never dream of, as a matter of course. Where for Harry, one of the biggest thrills of his early life was the holidays paid for by the rich philanthropists that funded the Brady Boys Club that he had joined in 1935, by then Cyril had presumably enjoyed numerous holidays to all the best spots in the United Kingdom and even ... unheard of ... abroad!

The plain simple fact is that while Harry thrilled to his charity funded trips to places like Camp Aylesbury and later the Isle of Wight (which will be mentioned again presently), the brother of his blood who these days called him only 'friend' was now the scion of a family on the level of those very same rich philanthropists mentioned above and we can be assured that there was nothing charitable and make do about HIS holidays. No tents or boarding rooms with bread and jam to eat or sausages and spuds to roast by camp fires – Cyril's accommodations ran more to luxurious hotels or guest houses and he ate off polished cutlery in restaurants where penguin suited waiters bowed and called him young sir.

Harry, we can further be assured, was never once in such an establishment and never could have been unless his working path had taken a slightly different turn and then he might have gained entry to the kitchens and been privileged to clean the dishes that Cyril ate off of during many of the three or four course sumptuous meals he most certainly experienced both at home and on holiday.

I can also say with certainty that Harry was never called 'Young Sir' though he might occasionally at this time be addressed as 'oi lad,' or 'sonny!'

At the age of 13 Harry Gilvicious celebrated his Barmitzvah and became a man in the eyes of his faith – a few months later he went out to work and became a man in fact.

In August of 1937 his brother Cyril Waterman turned 13 and soon after celebrated his own Barmitzvah in much more ostentatious style, symbolically passing into manhood but in fact remaining a school child for many more years to come.

One had gone out into the world early.

One was sheltered from the world.