Kitty had grown used to Maurice’s habit of expressing his sentiments, which she knew did not trip lightly from his tongue, through the words of others. In Auschwitz, he had told her, they had organised evenings of song and poetry in order to retain some vestige of humanity. Once, before her accident, she had been in the kitchen making pastry when Maurice, from his customary position by the window from where he seemed never to grow tired of watching her as she went about her chores, had recited: “I don’t believe in the heaven, Of which the preachers drone: I believe in your eyes only – There is my heaven alone”, and she had almost wept into the lemon curd tarts.
Watching him now, totally absorbed in the application of colour upon canvas, Kitty recognised in their non-verbal communication – her aloneness with Maurice was different from her aloneness with Sydney – an understanding, a mutual caring and respect.
The music came to an end and Maurice removed the Beethoven from the turntable, returning the record meticulously to its sleeve. He put on another but did not go back to his easel. He came to sit on the sofa beside Kitty. The music, a song, was unfamiliar. Kitty, looking up from the wool she was selecting, raised questioning eyebrows.
“‘An die Geliebte’,” Maurice said. “Beethoven wrote it for his sweetheart.”
She put down her needlework.
“I know I said six months,” Maurice said, “but I’d like for us to be married before we go on the cruise. I’ve never loved anyone else, Kitty. There doesn’t seem to be anything to wait for.”
A feeling of panic overtook her. Although she had not been unaware of the meaning of the growing intimacy between them in the past few days, and the strength of Maurice’s feelings for her, she had been unprepared, before the agreed time, for his proposal. How could she take such a step without consulting her family? What was she doing contemplating sharing her life with another man only two years after Sydney had died? She knew that had they been there, Josh, always practical, would have asked her if she knew what she was doing, putting doubts into her mind. Carol would have unnerved her, and Rachel, treasuring the memory of her late father, would have been angry. She had to make the decision, away from everyone she held dear, on her own.
Whilst Maurice waited for her reply and Beethoven serenaded his “Immortal Beloved”, Kitty tried to impose some semblance of order upon her thoughts. The most pressing question she must address was, Did she love Maurice? She did not “not love him”. Because of his history he had more than his share of idiosyncrasies, more dark and inward thoughts which she must not try to probe. What man, what person, did not carry with him his private hell which he had both to overcome and live with? That Maurice was kind there was no doubt; that his generosity was directed exclusively to herself was flattering. That he worshipped her was manifest; Herb and Ed and Mort referred to him jokingly as a lovesick adolescent.
Kitty considered her own feelings vis-à-vis Maurice. She was happy when she was with him. Extremely happy. Of course she was homesick in New York, separated from her nearest and dearest, but that was hardly Maurice’s fault. It was no fun being alone. She had had quite enough of widowhood since Sydney had died. Did she want to share the rest of her life, more intimately than she had in the past few months, with the man, a good many years older than she, who was waiting, as if he had all the time in the world, for her answer?
She was fond of Maurice. Love? Love was something else. She had loved Sydney from their first meeting. It had never waned. She did not know Maurice. To marry him would be like diving from a high board into waters of whose depth she was unsure.
And yet the thought of plighting her troth to him certainly did not alarm her. That there was a possibility of it she had, after all, acknowledged when she had agreed to come to New York. Inside she felt, she realised with amazement, as if she were eighteen and receiving her first proposal. The psyche, as well as having no colour, was ageless. She looked round Maurice’s apartment at the books extending from floor to ceiling with which Maurice had replaced his murdered family and with which he inured himself from the world. It was not London, her ordered sitting-room with its formal bird’s-eye maple furniture most of it from when she had first married Sydney, but it was certainly no punishment. Could she live in New York where, other than Bette Birnstingl, she had no friends? Could she, most importantly, live so far away from her children and grandchildren, her memories of Sydney and everything she held dear?
“I’m not much of a catch,” Maurice said, misinterpreting her silence. “I don’t have any family. There’s only me. Maybe you’d be lonely.”
Kitty was silent.
“I’m expecting too much,” Maurice said.
Still Kitty said nothing.
“There’s only one thing I have to offer you and it’s of no great value.”
She looked at him.
“My love. But it’s a big love. An overwhelming love. A painful love. It’s been in cold storage since they took my parents away, and my brothers and sisters. Since I lost my aunts and my uncles and my grandparents. Since I discovered, when I was no more than a child, what human beings were capable of. It’s the love of an adolescent, the love of a young man, the love of my middle-age, mature love. It’s the love of the family I never had, the love of the life I have never lived. It’s yours, Kit. All of it.”
The music came to an end, the arm lifted from the record and the player switched off, leaving the room soundless. Maurice was waiting for her answer.
Tempted to call upon Sydney for guidance as she was in the habit of doing when she was in a quandary, Kitty checked herself. This time she was on her own. She looked round the room at Maurice’s possessions, redolent of the man, inhaled the smell of paint and turpentine to which she had become accustomed, felt the presence of Maurice next to her and knew she must not walk away, that she did not want to. She thought of Rachel and Carol and Josh and that they had their own lives, were busy establishing their own dynasties, and that she must not make them the excuse for jeopardising her future.
“I don’t expect you to love me,” Maurice said. “Perhaps in time…”
“But I do,” Kitty said, surprised that she had spoken. And looking at him, the face with its furrows of suffering, the eyes that had witnessed what no man should be obliged to witness, the ardour in his regard that would kindle a fire in any woman, the current that passed through his skin to hers, she realised that she did. Afterwards she could not recall the exact sequence of events. There had been a lot of laughing and crying – “Where is it written that you can’t laugh and cry in the same day?” Maurice had said – and he had opened a bottle of champagne.
“‘She loves me! She loves me, the beautiful maiden’.” And Kitty’s sun, which she had thought had gone down with the death of Sydney, had risen over the horizon and started to fill her world with a warm and golden light. They had talked into the small hours. Having made her decision Kitty found herself opening out to Maurice, releasing her hopes, fears, expectations and dreams, bombarding him with emotions she had for so long been unable to share.
“You have made my life joyous,” Maurice said. “For many years I have only pretended to myself I was a happy human being.”
Perhaps it was the dim light of the lamp in which they sat, perhaps some trick, some delusion that deceives lovers, Kitty wasn’t sure, but when she looked at Maurice in his open-necked shirt, at his wayward shock of white hair, he appeared suddenly youthful as if he had shed the snakeskin of his past life and, rejuvenated, come to claim her. Later, alone in her apartment in front of the mirror, she had had to smile, wondering how anyone in his right mind could have proposed marriage to a woman with the scars of stitches on her forehead, whose face was black and blue, whose untended hair with its grey roots made a bizarre frame for her face, and thought that Maurice – a “beautiful maiden” was what he had called her – must indeed love her.
They decided to get married at once, as soon as the ceremony could be arranged. They would call the rabbi of the Kehilla
th Jeshurun, which Maurice knew was what Kitty wanted. There was nothing to wait for.
It was two in the morning when Kitty said: “What time is it in England?”
“Nine p.m. You want to call your children?” Excited as a young girl Kitty hadn’t thought what she would say, had not anticipated their reaction.
“Married!” Rachel said. “You can’t!”
“Why not?”
“You just can’t.”
“It’s what I’m going to do. You want to speak to Maurice?”
“No I don’t. What about us?”
“What about you?”
“Don’t you want us to be there?”
Kitty didn’t. She just wanted to get married quietly as they had decided. Not to make a big thing of it. They were too old.
“We’re going to Florida on honeymoon.”
Rachel was speechless.
“I’ve got to answer the doorbell,” she said stiffly. “It’s Patrick.”
Carol was incredulous.
“I don’t believe it,” she said when Kitty announced her intentions.
“People get married all the time,” Kitty said. “What is there not to believe?”
There was silence on the line while Carol digested the news.
“Mummy?”
“I’m still here.”
“I hope you’ll be happy.” Her daughter’s grudging tone belied the words.
Josh, surprised in the midst of a dinner party, said: “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. We’re getting married – Maurice and I.”
Against a hubbub of animated voices Kitty heard Sarah call: “Who is it, darling?” Then Josh said: “I suppose you know what you’re doing,” when it was perfectly obvious that he didn’t think that she did. He congratulated his mother then spoke to Maurice in a civilised manner, but the coolness with which he had greeted her announcement was patent across the Atlantic. It was Sarah, who insisted on speaking, who had wished her mazeltov.
“It was a mistake to phone,” Kitty said, her enthusiasm dampened as she sat cradling the telephone.
“They’ll come round,” Maurice said.
Kitty knew her children. None of them, when Maurice had come to Rachel’s wedding, had made any attempt to hide how they felt about him. The joy of the evening was dispelled.
“I’d better go to bed,” she said.
Maurice looked at her, touching the bruised forehead. “I shouldn’t have kept you up for so long.”
He kissed her mouth and it was more than compensation for Rachel’s rudeness, Josh’s coolness and Carol’s disbelief. They were at the door to his flat when the telephone rang.
Maurice went back to answer it. He held the receiver out to Kitty who had followed him.
“It’s Rachel.”
“Mummy?” Rachel said.
Kitty waited.
“I’m sorry. I was upset for a moment.”
“It was my fault,” Kitty said. “I should have broken the news gently.”
“Congratulations, anyway.”
“Thank you.”
“I really mean it. Do you believe me?”
“Of course.”
“You deserve a break. I’d like to speak to Maurice.”
It was typical of Rachel to have called back when she had got over her tantrum, not to have let her mother lose sleep over her daughter’s churlish reception of the news.
The conversation with Maurice seemed to go on for a long time. When it was finished and he had hung up, Kitty said: “What was all that about?”
Maurice chuckled. It was the first time Kitty had seen him so carefree.
“Instructions about how I was to take care of you, you are the only mother she has…and something else.”
Kitty looked straight at him.
“She’s going straight to the travel agent to book her flight. She says we’re not to dare to get married without her.”
Nineteen
Kitty leaned over the polished rail of the “M/S Song of Norway”, trying to convince herself that she was actually here, on board ship, one day out from Florida (a thousand miles long and one inch high), a bride for the second time in her life. The passenger list, left by the steward that morning in her stateroom together with the daily news bulletin and a printout of the day’s shipboard activities, had brought the fact home to her. Her name, Kitty Morgenthau, beside Maurice’s, sandwiched alphabetically between Buck and Serita Matheson of Tom’s River, and Gerald and Monica Thomas of Albuquerque, had given some substance to the dream in which she had been living for the past three weeks when her life, seemingly set on a dull and uneventful course after Sydney’s death, had miraculously changed tack.
The morning after Murice’s proposal, exhausted by the unaccustomed late night, and the excitement generated by her decision, Kitty had slept until noon. As she opened her eyes, her head was throbbing but she found that she was smiling although there was no one to see and she couldn’t remember why. Then she did, and stopped smiling because she was thinking of Sydney. She could see him as clearly as if he was in New York in her studio. He was not reproaching her.
“I’m sorry,” she said aloud.
Sydney put his arms round her and she could feel them as surely as if he were there in the flesh. “Be happy,” he said, and then he was gone.
She lay there for a long while, treasuring the moment, before she got up to dress in the cream-coloured two piece she had been saving for a special occasion and crossed the landing to Maurice’s flat.
Herb and Ed and Mort were there, as she had thought they might be, and to her surprise Bette Birnstingl, too. In front of them all Maurice had taken her in his arms and held her for a long, long time, almost lifting her off her feet, then he had opened another bottle of champagne and, amidst the congratulations, announced he was taking everyone out for lunch. She had hardly recognised Maurice. He had not been working for the first morning since she had been in New York, and was not wearing his paint-spattered slacks and his cotton sweater but a black, pin-striped suit from the days when he had practised as a physician, and a formal white shirt with a silver tie which echoed the hair which had been freshly cut and brushed back smartly, and she saw what a handsome suitor she had agreed to marry.
Bette, flushed with the excitement of the occasion (as if she were to be the bride), had brought her camera and she posed Kitty with Maurice, their arms around each other happily, then Kitty and Maurice with the “boys”, then Herb took the camera so that Bette could be in a picture, and they finished two more bottles before they left for the Windows on the World where Maurice had reserved a table. Kitty didn’t remember much about the lunch except that there was a great deal of hilarity and Bette flirted outrageously with Ed and Mort, and Maurice, although he ate little and said less, let go her hand only to pick up his fork and had never looked so happy. Afterwards, back in the apartment, having left Herb and Ed and Mort and Bette to sober up in Central Park, Kitty had been clearing the glasses away to the music Maurice had put on when he said: “Come and sit down, Kit.”
She had felt suddenly shy, as if she had to face him, her future husband, for the first time alone, and had fussed with the glasses and the empty bottles until he had taken her by the hand and led her to the sofa. Maurice had taken a small box from his pocket and laid it in her lap. Kitty, a middle-aged woman, had forgotten about rings – it was only afterwards that she realised
Maurice was playing “take this ring” from La Sonnambula – the traditional trappings of engagement which she associated with youth. She opened the velvet-lined box and saw an emerald in an antique setting of pearls which made her heart miss a beat.
“Nothing fancy,” Maurice said, and removing the ring from its box, put it on her finger over Sydney’s worn wedding band. Kitty was suddenly afraid. That she might get ill and die. That Maurice might get ill and die as Sydney had, leaving her alone again. That their future together might be short lived. The moment passed. She must not be greedy. She embrace
d Maurice and forgot her throbbing head, and her doubts, and the fact that she was in New York, and had the curious sensation that for the first time since her widowhood she had come home.
Later Maurice said: “There’s something been bothering me, Kit.” He circled the room, his hands in his pockets, and Kitty waited for him to speak.
“The past is over,” he said, and Kitty knew that he meant the concentration camps in which he had lost so much. “But it doesn’t go away…”
He was looking out of the window, at the rooftops of New York, seeing things which she could not.
“…a door banging. Smoke from a chimney. A train moving off…”
He turned to face her. “I have nightmares. I’m sitting naked in a tree with the snow on the ground while they hose me with icy water. Being buried alive. Sometimes I scream.”
“It will be all right,” Kitty said. She had slept for months beside Sydney while his frontal lobe tumour made remorseless inroads on his brain. She was no stranger to suffering.
“I just wanted you to know,” Maurice said.
Afterwards everything seemed to have happened so fast. The rabbi from the Kehillath Jeshurun agreed to marry them and Maurice finalised the arrangements for the cruise. While Kitty wrote letters to her family – including Beatty and Mirrie and her nephew Norman who was getting married himself at Christmas time – in England, Bette, in her element, insisting that Kitty was nowhere near well enough to go shopping herself, indulged her role as “image maker” and brought home boxes of clothes from Bloomingdale’s for the bride’s approval.
To Live in Peace Page 16