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to the others, who were just as afraid as I was and hurried by quickly.
    The Jewish tailoring shops were at the back of these houses. They were flimsy wooden structures built on stilts. A tall, narrow flight of rickety steps led upward and into them. We tramped up these steps in single file, holding onto the handrail with one hand. We entered into a roar of machines, the thin wooden floor vibrating beneath our feet. The men, bent over their machines, feet treadling, looked up and gave little cries of relief at the sight of us. The treadling stopped, and the room grew quieter, save for the noise of the men greeting their children.
    How they ran toward their fathers, sometimes throwing arms around their necks and hugging them, and how I envied them! I myself had simply halted, and waited a moment, trying to pluck up the courage to go up to my father. He was the only one among them who had not stopped treadling, and his machine alone still hummed and clattered, as he bent over it with his dark, glowering face.
    I went up at last, and timidly placed the can of tea and the package of bread and butter on the machine beside him. He said nothing. He did not look at me. I turned away and went back to the door to wait for the others. It would not be for too long. The men were not given much of a respite for tea. Yet the boys could not tear themselves away from their fathers and clung to them as long as they could. My envy grew as I watched them sitting close to their fathers, laughing and talking with them, and occasionally helping themselves to little bites of the bread and butter and sips of the tea.
    When it was at last time to go, and I began to turn away with them, I noticed that my father had finally stopped working and was now unwrapping the bread and butter and picking up the tea can. I caught this last glimpse of him as I followed the others through the door and down the rickety stairs. They were all in high spirits, racing and yelling at the top of their voices. I went quietly, and there was a heavy feeling inside me.
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    GROWING UP THAT SUMMER , but still very young, I could not have been conscious of the darkening clouds hanging over England, over the entire world in fact, as war broke out. I was much too absorbed in myself, in other things that were happening to me, and in how sorry I used to feel for my mother—that more than anything else, especially when I saw her crying quietly to herself and trying not to let us see—and how it used to upset me. The war, the Germans, the men being sent off to fight, were still more remote to me than the discovery of how poor we were.
    I was still young enough to go shopping with my mother, and to hold her hand as we went along King Street. It was a busy street. Horses and carts rattled by, and occasionally a motor lorry lumbered along. A delicious aroma came from Owens’s bakery shop, and my mouth watered at the sight of the currant buns in the window. We passed Kemps’s fish and chip shop, and the aroma there. The sizzling sound of the frying taunted me. My mother didn’t stop at any of the shops until she came to Hamer’s shoe shop, and there she paused a moment before entering.
    Mr. Hamer was a lean, lantern-jawed man, stooped, with green suspenders over a collarless shirt. He wore spectacles that were shiny in the dimness of the shop. It smelled of leather, and there were white boxes on shelves, and two chairs to sit on with footrests in front of them.
    â€œI just came to ask how much you’d want for a pair of shoes for him,” my mother said, almost apologetically.
    â€œFor him?” He pointed a finger at me, and then whatever it was he said made my mother gasp a little and shake her head.
    â€œI could never afford that,” she said.
    â€œWell, you’d better get ’im something,” Mr. Hamer said, casting a look down at my feet. I was wearing a pair that Saul had outgrown, and they were pretty