The Unfortunates. Laurie Graham
one of President Wilson’s Points. Serbia must have a corridor to the sea!’
She produced this with a flourish.
‘I say, Dora,’ Harry said. ‘I’m impressed!’
Ma blushed.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it may have been one of his Particulars, or perhaps one of his Ends, but anyway, there you have it.’
‘Never would have taken you for a bluestocking,’ he said. ‘Abe wouldn’t know you.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, sharper suddenly.
‘No. Nothing,’ he said, retreating as usual. ‘Nothing at all.’
I didn’t care for the way Harry was laughing at Ma. I knew she was doing all this for me, raising our stock with Miss Landau, paving the way to Oscar becoming my beau. I was proud of her and I told her so.
‘Why thank you, Poppy,’ she said. ‘I must say, sometimes I quite surprise myself.’
We sat for a while, after Harry left us, basking quietly in mutual contentment.
‘It occurs to me,’ Ma said, after a while, ‘that you might accompany me to Madame Paderewski’s lecture next week. It would broaden your education. Madame Paderewski is very desirous of Polish independence, you know?’
‘Will Miss Landau be there?’ I asked.
I cared nothing about the Polish. They might have their independence without bothering me over it. But I was avid to get any member of Oscar’s family in my sights. And so I fell in with Ma’s suggestion and hurried up to my room. I had only five days in which to prepare myself, and I wanted to strike the right note, or rather, a pleasing chord of spirited patriotism, savoir faire and unusual beauty. I decided I would leave off my turban, which Ma found worryingly foreign, and make a feature of my hair.
There was standing room only in the Fairway Hall. The Germans and Mr Lenin, Madame Paderewski explained, were picking over the remains of the Polish nation, but a committee had been formed, in Paris, to call a halt to this. Committees had really become quite the thing since the war started. Before that I don’t believe I had ever heard the word.
The Polish National Committee were getting up an army, and Madame Paderewski showed us on a large hanging map the places she said belonged in a united Poland. Silesia and Galicia. Poznania.
‘More countries to remember,’ Ma shuddered.
President Wilson, it seemed, was a true friend of the Polish nationalists, and one of his Fourteen Points was – here Ma dug me in the ribs – that an independent Poland must have a corridor to the sea.
‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ Ma whispered.
I said, ‘No. You said Serbia.’
‘Why, Poppy,’ Aunt Fish interrupted, a shade contemptuously, ‘everyone needs a corridor.’
Yetta Landau had been identified for me as an earnest-looking woman in a boater hat and a high-collared shirtwaist. She was sitting some distance from us, so Ma and Aunt Fish could do no more than smile and flutter their hands until the lecture ended and the donation buckets had been passed around and we were free to circulate.
Miss Landau shook my hand and hoped that I would do what I could for Poland.
‘Poppy is with the Red Cross, of course,’ Ma said. ‘In bandages.’
‘Important work,’ Miss Landau replied, ‘but we all have to ask ourselves what more we can do.’
She had a dry mouth that crackled when she spoke, and slightly gamy breath.
I said, ‘I shall be of age in November. Then I’m going to do something really important.’
‘Indeed?’ Ma said. ‘This is the first I heard of it.’
I said, ‘I’m going to buy trucks, like my cousin Addie, and drive them to the Western Front.’
Ma looked quite stunned. Miss Landau was studying my hair. I had allowed it full rein, and wound through it a twist of satin ribbons in lemon and raspberry. What could not be subdued should be emphasized, I had decided.
‘Don’t vex yourself, Dora,’ my aunt said. ‘Money for madcap schemes will not be forthcoming. I shall speak to Israel about it as soon I get home.’
I opened my mouth to protest, but over my shoulder Aunt Fish had spied another means of silencing me.
‘Mr Jacoby!’ she cried. ‘We had no idea you were here with Dear Yetta. What a pleasure!’
He had separated himself from the crowd and was heading toward us, smiling a little. Judah Jacoby, the real live father of the boy I dreamed about.
I turned scarlet, and Ma and Aunt Fish, in sympathy with me perhaps, glowed pinkly.
‘This is Dora’s girl,’ Miss Landau told him. ‘Seems to have her head screwed on, even if it is trimmed up like a circus pony.’
Mr Jacoby took my hand and bowed. Then he did the same to Aunt Fish and Ma. He was a small, soft, silver-haired man. His skin was buttery and his eyes were dark. He was, in fact, not at all what I had planned him to be. And Oscar had his father’s looks. Aunt Fish had said so.
‘Which lot is your son with, sir?’ I asked him, trying to retrieve something of the Oscar I had created. ‘I heard he volunteered.’
Mr Jacoby seemed pleased by my interest.
‘He’s with the 27th,’ he said. ‘In France, as far as we know.’
‘I pray he’ll come back to you safe and well,’ I said and I caught sight of Ma and Aunt Fish exchanging saccharine smiles, which faded as I declared, ‘I’ll be over there myself before long. I’m going to buy a field hospital, you see.’
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