To Live in Peace (18 page)

Kitty, in her reverie, leaning on the ship’s rail, wondered sometimes if she deserved such happiness, two bites at life’s cherry when there were so many unfortunate people – her sister-in-law Mirrie, for instance – who had not even managed one. She did not hear Maurice come up behind her but was aware that he was there. When he put his arms round her she turned to him and, as the “Song of Norway” scythed rhythmically through the awe-inspiring deeps towards Grand Cayman and Jamaica, laid her head on his accommodating shoulder.

While Kitty enjoyed the Caribbean sun, Rachel railed against her enforced inactivity in Patrick’s parents’ house in Winnington Road. She was not used to being idle. She was never ill and had always felt superior to her sister Carol, made of what Rachel considered less stern stuff and prey throughout her life to a succession of minor illnesses either real or imagined. That her own pregnancy, in which Rachel had been revelling in her image of earth mother, might turn out to be complicated had not entered her head. She who had been convinced of her influence on events – from conception to the therapeutic rendering of “Ten Green Bottles” – and that any deviation from the norm, or weakness, was in the mind, had received a blow to her pride. It was mortifying to be reminded that the workings of one’s body were not, as she had previously considered, entirely under one’s own control.

As she lay in bed in Hettie’s guest-room with its William Morris curtains, its matching bedspreads, and its toning carpet which unsubtly picked up the dominant yellow of the print, Rachel had more than enough time to think. She had already entered the lists with her mother-in-law who, now that she had Rachel physically in her clutches, had increased her efforts to influence the life of her first grandchild even before it was born. As she brought up bowls of home-made broth or bunches of grapes (as if she were really ill) for Rachel’s delectation, she would sit on the bed and, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm, tell her daughter-in-law of the crib bedecked with a million layers of peach tulle –
such as had graced the royal nursery – or a streamlined pram (which converted with a “hey-presto” into a carrycot) which she had seen. Rachel, having bought a Moses basket at Camden Lock, and a sling in which she would transport her child for the first four months of its life – after which it would be the folding buggy – was unmoved.

She did not dislike Hettie who, glad to have some purpose to her life, was killing her with daily doses of kindness, but there seemed to be no meeting point between them. She fed her patient tit-bits from the delicatessen when Rachel yearned for her familiar casseroles of mung beans and tofu, and came, seeking to please her, into the bedroom with armfuls of glossy magazines (women as object) and copies of Maisie Mosco.

Their only mutual interest was Kitty, and already, each reading the other her postcards with the news of the wedding and the forthcoming honeymoon in Florida, the subject had been done to death. Despite herself, when Kitty in juxtaposition to Maurice was discussed, Rachel, irrationally, still felt her hackles rise. While her good wishes to her mother on the telephone and by letter had been genuine enough – she dearly wanted her to be happy – something within her still screamed “Judas” and she dreamed many a night of her dead father. No matter how hard she tried to sort the matter out in her head, to make Kitty’s welfare her prime concern, her mother, in committing herself to Maurice Morgenthau, had gone down several notches in Rachel’s estimation. To hear
Hettie discuss the romance as if her mother’s elderly suitor was Prince Charming and Kitty herself Cinderella, sickened Rachel and she preferred to direct the conversation to Hettie’s main concern, what she was going to put on her daughter-in-law’s tray, with its drawn-thread traycloth, for her next meal.

Herbert, surprisingly, was more congenial. Rachel had even grown used to the jokes. Delighted to have a captive audience he would come up to her bedroom as soon as he got home at night and sit on her bed, trying to make her laugh: “A Jewish doctor gave a patient six months to live but when the man didn’t pay he gave him another six months!

“How’s your mother enjoying Florida? Mr Cohen comes home one night and starts to pack his bags.

“‘So where are you going?’ asks his wife.

“‘To Tahiti.’

“‘Tahiti. Why Tahiti?’

“‘Simple. Every time you make love there they give you $5.’

“Then Mrs Cohen starts packing her bags.

“‘And where are you going?’ asks Mr Cohen.

“‘I’m also going to Tahiti.’

“‘Why?’

“‘I want to see how you make out on $10 a year!’

“Did you hear the one about a group of Jewish women who wanted to improve their intellectual level? No more talk of maids or children – but only politics and social questions: Poland, El Salvador. Afghanistan, the Bomb. Then one said ‘And what about Red China?’ ‘I love it! I love it!’ says another member of the group. ‘Especially on a white tablecloth!’”

Once she had reconciled herself to her father-
in-law’s
stories – some of which were not unamusing – his commitment to find the Jew in everything, and his
appraisal of people according to the degree of their support for Israel, Rachel found him straightforward, informative and entertaining, and loved to hear stories of the famous old-time Jewish coach “Yussel the muscle”, who had managed Max Schmeling and the boxers, Ted “Kid” Lewis and Jack “Kid” Berg, who had come out of the East End after the First World War.

“Houdini was a Jew,” Herbert said one night as he gave Rachel the evening paper. “His name was Ehrich Weiss and he was born in Budapest. His father was a rabbi. They called him Ehrie for short, which when they went to America became ‘Harry’. He took ‘Houdin’ from Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, ‘The Father of Modern Magic’, and later, as a stage musician, added the ‘i’, Harry Houdini.”

Through Herbert, whose eyes lit up at the mere recitation of their names, Rachel learned to know the Jewish footballers, Abe Rosenthal – his hero – Bela Guttman from Hungary, Miles Spector, the Chelsea left winger, Avi Cohen and Mordecai Spiegler from present day Israel over which country, Rachel discovered, she and her father-in-law were on the same side. Herbert Klopman, of everyone she knew, endorsed her political views.

Sometimes Herbert’s mother, old Mrs Klopman, coming into Rachel’s room without knocking whenever the mood took her, interrupted the discussions, picking up the fag ends of the conversation and adding her own two penn’orth.

“A lot of stuff and nonsense,” she’d say when the subject came round to the military actions of the Palestinian refugees. “My grandmother, God rest her soul, was a refugee, but I ask you, did that make her a terrorist? Sure it did not.”

When her son talked about “the Jews”, she’d say: “For heaven’s sake, Herbert, it’s as bad as talking about ‘the Irish’, you dehumanise people, put them in a lomp, isolate them from the human race.”

Rachel got on well with Patrick’s grandmother. When Herbert was at business and Hettie out shopping, at which she seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time, or at the Children’s Home, she’d have long discussions with old Mrs Klopman whose views on childbirth seemed to have skipped a generation. From the choice of cradle on which she sided with Rachel against Hettie (“Sure, as long as you’ve got a drawer to lay them in”) to the management of the newborn, their views coincided. According to old Mrs Klopman (who didn’t hold with hospital maternity wards where the babe was put behind glass in a cot to cry itself to sleep because nobody came nigh nor by), he should rest in enfolding arms near to his mother’s heart, hearing the sound of her voice, close to the warmth of her breast.

“Carol’s having a nanny,” Rachel said. “She’s decorating the nursery in the new house with yellow ducklings.”

“Yellow ducklings or no, it’ll not be different from the maternity ward,” old Mrs Klopman said. “He’ll be wanting and waiting from one feed to the next. Will I tell you a secret, Rachel? I had Herbert at the breast until he was two years old.”

Carol had been to see her, and Sarah, each commiserating with the unfortunate turn Rachel’s pregnancy had taken. Josh had made enquiries but she refused to allow him to visit.

Carol looked out of the window of the train as it trundled towards Godalming and hugged to herself the surprise that she was going to give Alec. Because of the persistent
nausea and discomfort which had prevented her both from choosing her own decorations for the new house (apart from the yellow ducklings) and getting down as often as she would like to Godalming, Morris Goldapple had insisted on another ultrasound scan, although strangely enough in the last few days the malaise which had dogged her for the past nine months had lifted, and despite her bulk she felt an unaccustomed energy, a lightness of mind and body.

Before the other children were born she had thrown herself into an excess of house cleaning, “feathering her nest”, Alec had called it. In her temporary accommodation in her mother’s flat there was little point. She had prepared her nursery – temporary until such time as the move could be made to the yellow ducklings – packed her case and the baby’s vests and matinée jackets (opening it a dozen times a day to see if there was anything she had forgotten), prepared small gifts for Debbie and Lisa and Mathew to compensate for each day of her absence, and installed the nanny – a pleasant enough girl whose presence would give her more time for her writing – in her smart brown uniform.

There was nothing to do now but wait for the onset of her labour to which she was not in the least looking forward. She was, she admitted, a coward. While her sister Rachel had, for the last six months, lain on the floor with dozens of other women in rows like beached whales, huffing and puffing in an attempt to simulate natural childbirth, Carol had put her faith in Morris Goldapple with his epidural – which according to Rachel came into the same category as surgical inductions, unnecessary episiotomies, the use of forceps and caesarean sections which were purely for his own convenience and that of the hospital staff – to ensure a
painless delivery. Rachel, for all her didactic approach to parturition, her lofty assertion that “a healthy woman is not designed to suffer in childbearing: she is wonderfully constructed and equipped for this her most desirable attainment”, had no idea what it was about. No matter how much you huffed and puffed, no matter how many times you sang “Ten Green Bottles” in an effort to relax, there was no getting away from the fact that giving birth was like no other thing on earth, and that the pain of it was both indescribable and unbearable. It was not simply a question of physical exertion. Pushing a baby out was a sheer wrench of undiluted agony. What Rachel, in her determination to imitate childbirth in the bush or the harem, failed to consider were the prolapses, the puerperal fever and all manner of other equally “natural” but undesirable consequences that her proposed behaviour might precipitate. Rachel had accused Carol of compliance, of being turned into a mere receptacle by Morris Goldapple who insisted that the foetal heartrate could only be monitored satisfactorily (ensuring that the baby was not suffering undue stress or being deprived of oxygen) if the mother were lying down, and who would have no truck with his patients crawling around a darkened room on all fours. Rachel would have to find out for herself.

Morris Goldapple had broken the news gently. In his elegant rooms – which had become familiar to Carol through the births of Debbie and Lisa and Mathew – where she had gone for her consultation, he had settled her in the comfortable armchair and, being an old friend of the family, enquired about her mother. When Carol had finished telling him about Kitty’s marriage and the honeymoon cruise, Morris had pulled up a chair beside her and put a fatherly hand on hers.

“I think we’ve discovered the cause of your discomfort…”

Rachel had told her she was neurotic.

“…there are two babies.”

Wait till she told Rachel!

“One was behind the other. Because of the way they are lying it wasn’t obvious before.”

“Twins?” Carol said, only just taking it in.

“Think you can manage two?”

With Debbie and Lisa and Mathew that made five.

“Would you like a glass of water?”

He had tried to call Alec but the surgery number was engaged. Then Carol had a better idea – she would go down to Godalming, it wouldn’t take long on the train – and break the news to Alec herself.

She had never thought that she would get used to Godalming, to life outside the London streets, but now, as the train approached, she realised how much she missed the rural peace, the delicate air, the walks with Alec and the children in the grounds of Charterhouse with its spring daffodils, its summer magnolias, the car-park “Pay and Display” outside the supermarket where she did her weekly shopping, the shops – Pepperpot Cards, Bookshelf Bargain, and Caprice (Gifts) – where she was known. The Queen Anne house, progressing slowly in the hands of the dilatory builders, would not now be ready until after Christmas. Carol could hardly wait.

Jessica had been a godsend. According to Alec there were no pains to which she would not go to select a finish or secure a fabric she had set her heart on. On the one occasion Carol had met her, in her hard hat and riding gear, striding through the bare rooms with her ideas and her enthusiasms “That would look simply super!” and her “Absolutely not!” Carol had realised that the extensive decorations were a great deal more than she
was able to cope with and had been happy to leave the decisions and the running around entailed in Jessica’s capable hands. More than she missed Godalming, Carol had missed Alec. Not the physical relationship – due to her uncomfortable pregnancy there had thankfully been little lately, of that – but the daily intimate contact, sharing the nuts and bolts of their lives. She had written a poem eulogising married love which she would send to Kitty when it was published.

She put a surreptitious hand on the front of her expandable dungarees beneath which her two babies lay intertwined. “Be fruitful and multiply” the Torah commanded. She and Alec had certainly done their duty in that direction. In others, too. Often Carol wished her father was alive to see Debbie and Lisa’s command of Hebrew, their knowledge of the Biblical stories and understanding of the festivals as taught to them by a Miss Wiseman who had retired to Guildford and had come over weekly to Peartree Cottage. Josh – apart from the lip service he paid to the religion to support Sarah’s conversion – had turned his back on Sydney’s teachings, and Rachel was interested only in Israel, her views about which had alienated her from Josh. It made Carol uncomfortable. With her mother away she felt, as the oldest daughter, responsible somehow for the family and did not like the constant bickering and dissent.