Rosa. Ros Collins
to have a look at television in Brit, see if it had any potential for advertising. TV’s coming to Australia now, what with the Olympics in Melbourne, so they gave me a year’s leave without pay – but kept the job open.’
Solly considered the strange young man and the country from which he came. Australia. What kind of Jews lived there? Wasn’t the place founded by convicts? There were black people with spears, so he’d heard. Kangaroos – were they dangerous? Sheep, now he knew about sheep, for Australian wool was highly prized in the rag-trade, and he seemed to recall that Sadie thought well of the butter and dried fruit. Still, it didn’t add up to yidishkayt, Jewish culture. Solly was a modest man, never sought wealth or status, and fundamentally had a happy disposition. If he had any regrets, it was probably the fact that Sadie had miscarried two little boys and now they had just one child – Rosa, the daughter he was about to ‘give away’. He was deeply romantic, and in all their long marriage he adored his tiny wife with her gentle Welsh accent; and she adored him equally. Al, on the other hand, didn’t strike him as deeply anything; in fact, it wouldn’t surprise him at all if the young Australian suddenly backed out of the marriage altogether. But Rosa: he would never have come right out and said it to anyone, but somewhere in the furthest recesses of his mind he acknowledged that she was running away – from him and Sadie, from aunts, uncles and cousins, and from the London Jewish community, and there was very little he could do about it.
‘Tell you what. I’ll give you the money for your ticket home – a wedding present, if you like. You make the arrangements with the people at Australia House. Now, shall we watch the soccer? It’s the Gunners and the Spurs.’ And then, remembering Al was a colonial, ‘Arsenal and Tottenham.’ Quite soon they were both asleep.
It was an odd wedding, unlike any other the family had celebrated. Three weeks were all they had to organise it, for the passages to Melbourne were already booked on a P&O liner the government had requisitioned to send migrants to the Antipodes. The man at Australia House had somehow fixed them up with a cabin to themselves, well below the water line, but their own: It’s your honeymoon after all and we don’t want Rosa in a dormitory with all the other women, do we?
Solly botched the notice in the Jewish Chronicle. One breathless paragraph to say that the engagement is announced, the wedding will take place and the young couple will sail immediately for Australia. Many were convinced that Rosa was pregnant. She wasn’t, and months earlier had in fact lied her way into a family planning clinic and emerged triumphantly with a ‘Dutch cap’. Less successful were the attempts by the League of Jewish Womanhood, who wrote reminding her to observe Jewish religious laws regarding purity. The Hon. Sec. sent her an article written by a lady doctor explaining the restrictions surrounding niddah, menstruation, and the necessity of visiting the mikveh, ritual bath, before commencing or resuming sexual intimacy. The Hon. Sec. regretted that these important and vital laws are not understood by many young people of our present generation and are greatly neglected by them.
‘There’s absolutely no way I will visit the mikveh,’ said Rosa.
‘The letter says the laws of niddah and mikveh have to be carefully observed throughout our married life,’ teased Al.
‘Bullshit,’ said Rosa who had picked up a lot of new swear words from the Australians.
There was no relative from the groom’s side, and so his student friends from Australia and New Zealand stepped into the breach. Most of the guests had never met Al, and a good number of Rosa’s aunts, uncles and cousins thought that she was not only out of her mind, but also irresponsible, even cruel, to leave her parents to grow old alone. But Sadie and Solly handled everything with surprising aplomb. They found a reception hall at short notice in rural Essex, and although the Suez Crisis meant that there was very little petrol, they managed to organise a handful of cars.
Rosa insisted on a wedding dress that had no frills or lace, and Liberty in Regent Street were able to provide a true French classic, a Pierre Balmain copy in white grosgrain.
Al made just one contribution to the day, a request about flowers. He wanted Australian wattle, but the English florist had no idea what it was. French mimosa was the nearest she could manage, and the tiny sprigs of yellow blossom in his buttonhole were as close as he got to having a relative with him at his wedding. Freesias were his other choice, and now, sixty years on, when it’s spring in Melbourne, Rosa fills vases from the garden as a remembrance.
Al was very apprehensive and might not have made the ceremony at all, had it not been for his supportive friends who allowed him to stop on the way to the synagogue for several ‘heart-starters’. Solly and Sadie were respected founding members of a suburban congregation and there was quite a turnout of curious onlookers. The rabbi had insisted that Al provide documentary evidence from the Great Synagogue in Sydney that he was indeed a Jew and did not have any other wife; it was touch and go whether the cable would arrive on time. The rabbi wasn’t a very warm person but bent a little and allowed Al and Rosa to hold hands. Al wore a soft-brimmed fedora for the ceremony, the first and only hat he ever owned, and tossed it into the air outside the synagogue door as they left.
Solly was in his element when he made his speech; he spoke lovingly and with wit. Al had had a few drinks and was well on the way to being shicker when he responded. Rosa danced with Solly, and with the best man, who was from New Zealand. The best man’s wife, who was to become a famous photographer, took very informal pictures and upset the caterers by leaving her flash bulbs in the fruit bowls. The guests lined up to wish the couple well and little envelopes with cash exchanged hands: it turned out to be just enough to buy a dinner service, black Poole pottery with a bamboo design (very collectable in later years), a half-set of Danish cutlery, some blue-and-white-striped Cornish kitchenware and a few trad jazz LPs. Also a Georgian engagement ring – garnet and seed pearls.
When it was time to leave, the Aussie students sang ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and everyone gathered to say goodbye. Rosa wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, took the pillion seat and threw her bouquet to the well-wishers. Al kick-started the Lambretta and Rosa held on tightly as they skidded off into the snow.
It was grey and wet on the day they left England, and both Rosa and Al were grateful for their army surplus duffel coats. The port of Tilbury is located in a dreary David Lean-ish black and white marshland area at the mouth of the Thames and, apart from its maritime history, is most remembered for the speech Elizabeth I made to her troops, who in 1588 were facing the Spanish Armada. On the deck of the SS Stratheden Al made a speech too – a courageous one; they joked for years about his ‘Tilbury speech’. Rosa was as much a mystery to him as he was to her, but he understood that her relationship with her parents had not always been harmonious and that she and Sadie did not ‘get along’.
‘I’d like you three to make things right before we leave,’ he began.
‘I know you have differences of opinion but I don’t want there to be bad feeling between you, and I want you to be okay with each other because Rosa will be a long way away and I don’t want anyone being miserable.’ Not quite grammatically correct, but Al’s heart was right on beat.
‘Please, can you make up and be friends? I just don’t want to take Rosa to Melbourne and she’ll be sorry and you’ll be unhappy and I’ll feel responsible.’ The words were jumbled but Solly at least got the message.
Solly was a Londoner; he didn’t think much in Yiddish, but now for some reason he recalled how his mother had called Rosa a sheyn meydl, ‘a pretty girl’. He remembered the baby, the schoolgirl, the young woman – all the twenty-seven years of her. He and Sadie would have to rebuild. ‘We’ll be fine,’ he said as his heart began to ache.
Everyone kissed and hugged and there were promises of regular letters