“And the Frenchies? The higher one of them holds his perfumed nose in the air the more likely it is that his great-grandmama was a fille de roi, a little whore shipped over by the king so that she could marry a soldier and have twenty-five kids before she was forty. To this day you know what a French-Canadian family gives the daughter for a wedding present she’s only sixteen years old? Hold on to your hat, fella. They send her to a dentist to have all her teeth yanked out and to fit her with false ones, which they consider prettier. Where was I? The Gurskys, yeah. Well the Gurskys didn’t come here steerage fleeing from some drecky shtetl. My family was established here before Canada even became a country. We’re older, how about that?”
But in a more mischievous mood, dandling one grandchild on his lap, the others gathered round his chair, he would say, “Your great-great-grandpappy, hoo boy, he was something else. I was his favourite, you know. But I have to say that Ephraim, that old son of a gun, why he never did an honest day’s work in his life.”
Actually that was not the case. Ephraim’s first job, after he had run away, was in a coal mine in Durham. He was a scrawny thirteen-year-old at the time and his duties were twofold. Working deep underground, near the heading of a new road, he had to convey oxygen from the shaft by opening and closing ventilator doors, regulating the air current. He also had to maintain traffic on the courses, clearing the mullock for the man labouring at the face. The area he was obliged to crouch in was only three feet high and wide. The coal dirt was loaded into sledges known as dans with an iron ring welded to each end. It was dark down there, dark as a raven’s wing, the only available candles fixed to the ends of the stages. And in those days the sledges didn’t ride the rails, but had to be dragged along wet clayey soil to the gob, where they would be emptied. Ephraim, stripped to the waist in the heat and the dark, wore a sturdy rope belt with a chain attached. Hooking the chain to the sledge, sinking to all fours, mindful of scuttling rats, he would crawl along, dragging his load, singing the songs he had learned at his father’s table:
Twice a day at fixed times during his twelve-hour shift he would stop to gorge himself on huge chunks of pulpy white bread, a gristly beef bone, and cold coffee gulped out of a tin canteen that unfailingly tasted of anthracite grit. The crash of shifting rock and coal above his head was alarming, but the pay was excellent—ten pence a day, five shillings in a good week. When he got to the top, panting, sucking air, he could always flirt with the pitbrow girls, who sorted and graded the coal at the surface. Among themselves the girls called him Little Lucifer. They were afraid of him. Not Kate, however. Once a week Ephraim paid Kate, one of the County Clare girls, a sixpence to go with him to the leaky shack at the far end of the slag heap. Standing on a box, he would have her against the wall, the earthen floor too mucky for such sport.
Ephraim had only been employed in the mine for six months when he became a trapper-boy, minding the doors to allow putters to pass with their ponies and coal-tubs. This called for quickness of feet as empty tubs came hurtling down a steep incline toward him in trains of sixty.
The miners taught him bawdy songs.
Ephraim became a putter himself. His new job was to push, or put, the trains of coal that had been filled by the hewers as far as the crane, where they were hoisted on wagons to be hauled the rest of the way by ponies. The average heft of a loaded tub was six to eight hundredweight, and Ephraim, paid by the number of tubs he put, now earned as much as three shillings, six pence a day. He supplemented this by delivering newspapers for a newsagent in an adjoining village, which is how he came to meet the affable Mr. Nicholson, the schoolmaster. Mr. Nicholson was astonished to learn that Ephraim could read and write. In spite of Mrs. Nicholson’s objections, he began to lend the boy books. Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. Robinson Crusoe. “Tell me, boy,” Mr. Nicholson asked one day, “did you know that your namesake was the second son of Joseph, born of Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah?”
Confused by the names pronounced in English, Ephraim refused to commit himself.
Mr. Nicholson brought out the family Bible, turned to Jeremiah, and read aloud what the Lord had said unto his prophet. “‘I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.’” Moving his finger lower down the page, he found the other passage he wanted. “Jeremiah, you know, foretold the coming of Christ. ‘Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah, with the seed of man …’”
Ephraim leaped up as Mrs. Nicholson brought them tea with bread and strawberry jam.
“‘… and with the seed of beast,’” she said.
Considerably younger than Mr. Nicholson, she was pale, her manner severe, disapproving.
“Joshua, the son of Nun, was descended from your namesake,” Mr. Nicholson said, all twittery.
Mrs. Nicholson set down her teacup, shut her eyes, and swaying just a little in her chair recited, “‘And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go and view the land, even Jericho. And they went and came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there.’”
The colour rising in his cheeks, Mr. Nicholson said, “When Jacob was ailing he acknowledged the two sons of Joseph, blessing Ephraim with his right hand and Manasseh with his left.”
“Do you know why, boy?” Mrs. Nicholson demanded.
“It was to show that the descendants of Ephraim would become the greater people.”
“Hip hip hurrah,” Mr. Nicholson said, “you have read your Old Testament.”
“Only in Hebrew, sir.”
“Fancy that.”
Shutting her eyes, swaying again, Mrs. Nicholson declaimed, “‘Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood. And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests murder in the way by consent: for they commit lewdness.’” Her eyes fluttered, they opened, and she stared at Ephraim. “‘I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israeclass="underline" there is the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled.’”
“Yes, yes, my dear. But surely not this sweet little Ephraim. Where are you from, boy?”
“Liverpool.”
“Is that where your parents be?”
“They are dead, sir.”
“Or have been transported, more likely,” Mrs. Nicholson said.
“And where did they come from?”
“Minsk.”
Mrs. Nicholson snorted.
“I would like to study Latin and penmanship with you, sir, providing you set a fair price.”
Mr. Nicholson rocked on his heels. “Oh dear me,” he said, shaking with laughter, “a fair price, is it?”
Mrs. Nicholson managed to convey her disapprobation by the manner in which she swept up the tea things, and then retreated into the kitchen.