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.
It was ridiculous really. They were all in the same boat, having babies, and there should have been a pleasant atmosphere, a sort of jolly togetherness, instead of which, until her forced incarceration at Hettie Klopman’s, Rachel would not visit Carol when Josh was there and Josh didn’t want to meet Rachel – whose behaviour towards him he found offensive – and Sarah wasn’t too keen on talking to Rachel because Josh was upset, and Patrick, taking Rachel’s side, thought it better that the two of them kept well away from one another. Kitty would not have stood for such nonsense.
Carol could see both points of view. She appreciated that although there were those, like her brother and sister, who cared vehemently, deeply, blindly, about issues, she seemed never herself to hold strong opinions about anything. Her shilly-shallying extended to her mother’s marriage. She wanted Kitty to be happy. It had been no fun, she could see, being a widow, but she wasn’t at all sure about Maurice Morgenthau. Firstly he was too old. Secondly they did not share a common background. Maurice had seemed a gruff sort of fellow, uncouth in a way, not like her late father with his impeccable manners. It was done now. She hoped Kitty wouldn’t live to regret her decision.
Godalming. The familiar station with its hanging baskets which in summer were ablaze with busy lizzies and geraniums, its ticket office, “Take Off for France” and “Day Trips from London”. It felt like coming home. In the station yard, peaceful as she remembered it, flooded with the pallid winter sun, there were no taxis. Carrying herself carefully, heavily, mindful of the jutting stones, she started to walk down the hill and through Mint Street, taking the short cut past the DIY centre and the Salvation Army with its weathered proclamation: “Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” As she progressed warily along the High Street where the disposition of the shops was inscribed like a litany in her head, she glimpsed her reflection, rotund and cumbersome, against the seductive arrangements of wares in the sun-glinted windows.
At Alec’s hotel the receptionist in her glass booth was on the telephone: “…I paid £28 for the operation – it was the
biggest stone they’d ever seen – and when she came round they said ‘What sort of food does she eat? –’” which Carol thought was rather strange until she realised that the girl was talking about her cat.
She put her hand over the receiver while she told Carol that Alec was neither in the bar nor the restaurant, in fact if she wasn’t mistaken she had seen Dr Caplan go out half an hour ago, then waved dismissively and went back to her call. Although she was hungry, having expected to lunch with Alec at the hotel, Carol decided to walk, slowly, which was all she was capable of, up the hill to the new house where she guessed she would find him supervising the position of an electrical outlet, or the crazy paving on the broad terrace outside the dining-room into which, at Jessica’s suggestion, they had installed picture windows. She glanced in the shops, not hurrying, savouring the news that she carried. She wanted to tell it to the passing pedestrians with their baskets, to proclaim it in the Godalming streets.
The door of the Queen Anne house was open. Outside it she was relieved to see Alec’s Volvo – his stethoscope on the seat, and the sign on the windscreen “Doctor Visiting” – and Jessica’s Land-Rover with its chrome mascot. In the hall which smelled of new wood, particles of dust, floating in a beam of sunlight, followed her in from the street. The house was taking shape. Half closing her eyes she could imagine it, now that the steels and the joists were in place, occupied by herself and Alec and Debbie and Lisa and Mathew and the two babies, not like Peartree Cottage where there hadn’t been room to move.
In the quiet she moved silently across the ground floor. They were installing a country kitchen which was being made by Jessica’s local craftsmen out of yew. The pipes – essential services – were still being laid. Open-ended, they traversed the floor and protruded from the walls. From the sitting-room Carol looked out at the pecking blackbirds on the neglected lawn. On the staircase, curved and romantic, down which she would sweep like Scarlett O’Hara – when she was no longer pregnant and like a barge in full sail – an electric drill and a neat pile of workman’s overalls blocked her way. On top of them she recognised Jessica’s hard hat. She stepped carefully, mindful of her condition. The rooms on the first landing were empty, the plaster newly wet. They would be ready soon for decorating, the final phase. Carol’s feet, in her sensible rubber-soled shoes – she wasn’t taking any chances – made no sound on the hardboard with which the builders had covered the oak floor as she approached the master bedroom.
She opened the door, taking pleasure in its width and elegance. Jessica and Alec were out of sight in the dressing-room; she could hear them talking.
“Are you going to be long with those swatches? We’re wasting the whole afternoon.” Alec’s baritone with which she had fallen in love.
Something in his voice made Carol pause, her hand on the old-fashioned doorknob.
“How does terracotta grab you for the blinds, darling?” Jessica’s clipped tones.
Carol blinked, wondering if she had misheard.
“They can be sky-blue-pink for all I care!”
“Alec! All those patterns were in order…” Jessica’s voice tailed off.
“God, I love you.” It was Alec who spoke.
There was a silence so long that Carol thought she would faint then a low laugh, Jessica’s.
“Look, you go ahead. The key’s in my bag. I must wait and have a quick word with the foreman…”
Another silence. Interminable.
“Don’t be long.” Alec again.
Jessica’s sigh.
Carol shut the door soundlessly. Afterwards she could not remember leaving the house.
Twenty-one
Southbeach Oceanfront Motel
Key West
Florida USA
5 p.m. (I’ve lost track of the date)
DEAR RACHEL,
I am writing this outside our bedroom on a wooden balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the southernmost city of the United States (ninety miles to Cuba!). Maurice has gone for a walk. He likes to be by himself for a good part of the day (‘Solitude has two advantages, one in being by yourself and two, in not being with other people’, he says some funny things) and I don’t interfere. There was so much going on, on the ‘Song of Norway’ – I’ve got my ‘I’M SHIPSHAPE’ sun visor and tee-shirt for the Walk-a-Thon (see photo, that’s me with the dumb-bells) – that there was only time for postcards, so now that I’ve got a moment I’ll try to gather my thoughts together. It seems so long since the wedding (I was broken hearted you weren’t there, once I’d got used to the idea you were coming) and the flight to Miami – which is like New York, Hackney and Haifa rolled into one – where we picked up a car and drove to Palm Beach.
Imagine walking about on the set of ‘Dynasty’ – where every way you turn you bump into a Joan Collins or a Linda Evans, designered down to the last eyelash – and you have Worth Avenue. Our suite at the Breakers Hotel, which Maurice had booked for the first two nights, was the size of my entire flat back home and made me feel like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and the President of General Motors. Maurice wanted everything to be nice so I didn’t say anything, but it wasn’t really ‘me’. The whole trip neither, really, even the ship with the bands and the streamers when you went on board and the plastic grass on deck with the steward going around with his tray of Piña Coladas. It certainly wasn’t Maurice.
Key West is different. It’s very relaxed – you go around in shorts all day (I’m getting to be a real American grandmother) – even to a restaurant. Our motel is right on the beach and we spend the day reading, walking and swimming from the little jetty. I don’t go out far because Maurice doesn’t take his eyes off me – it was the same in the ship’s pool, he used to stand on the side holding my bathrobe – I think he’s afraid of losing me. The sunsets here are indescribable and every evening we drive out to the fishing pier, where they catch the sardines, to watch the colours in the sky as the sun goes down beneath the water and the light fades.
To get back to the cruise. The first night out, the Eastern Airlines passengers’ luggage hadn’t arrived. One woman was very upset, she had nothing to wear but her travelling clothes, so I lent her something for dinner and we became quite friendly. Her name is Rose and she comes from Washington.
Our first port of call was the island of Grand Cayman (Big Crocodile), shaped like a footprint in the sand. We arrived in the early morning and went ashore by tender because of the Coral Reef. We had a quick look round George Town (450 banks!) where I bought two angelic hand-embroidered dresses for Debbie and Lisa, black coral cuff-links for Josh and Alec and Patrick, and necklaces for you girls, before catching the bus for the green turtle farm. I could have done without the turtles! Tiny hatchlings to 600 pound giants displayed in large round tanks. If I was a marine biologist I suppose I could have raised some enthusiasm (apparently Prince Philip went crazy about them), but as it was, although some of the patterns on the shells were quite pretty, the turtles seemed uninteresting creatures and left me cold and I wasn’t sorry when we left for the Buccaneer Beach Party at Seven Mile Beach. There were organised sports – Egg Throw and Volleyball – for the energetic, but you know me, I couldn’t wait to get into the water which, without exaggeration, was aquamarine and indigo. They set up lunch in two large tents and we ate it at a wooden table on the beach in the shade of a casuarina tree, our feet on a carpet of pine cones. I tried to believe that you were coming up to winter and that the days must be drawing in, but England seemed so far away.
Jamaica was exciting. You should have seen the hummingbirds, Rachel, with their green and black heads, hovering in front of the hibiscus. Of course we couldn’t see everything in one day so we chose the tour of Ocho Rios and Dunn’s River Falls where the kids stripped off to climb the waterfall. You should have heard the shrieks! Apparently it’s not as difficult as it looks on the photo but rather them than me! Maurice and I took the easy way, down the steps in the shade of the banyans, to the beach. When we reached the bay a Jamaican
child no older than Mathew sidled up to me and wanted to hold my hand. Maurice took my photograph with him (against a background of the Falls) and you can see by the little boy’s smile that it really made his day.
Cozumel, off the coast of Mexico, and one of the Mayan holy places, was something for Maurice who loves anything to do with the past. We went on a rickety bus to an archaeological site dating back to the early classical period. I enclose a snapshot of Maurice (doesn’t he look cute in his shorts and long socks and baseball cap?) listening, lost to the world, to the guide. After the ruins we drove south to the tropical gardens (250 different species of plant) and I swam again (I’m brown as a berry) this time in the Chancanaab Lagoon.
The photograph where we’re all sitting round the table with red eyes (from the flash, our waiter took it) – is the Captain’s Gala Dinner – hence the balloons – which was followed by a masquerade. Rose went as a bowl of fruit. After that it was back to Miami, arriving in the early morning. I had to clear immigration because of my British passport and it was quite sad exchanging addresses with our new friends (Maurice stayed in the cabin and told me to tell them goodbye) although I don’t suppose we shall ever see any of them again.
So far since we’ve been here in Key West we have taken the Conch Tour Train round the island, climbed to the top of the lighthouse and been to the Sponge Market and the Shell Warehouse (I’ve bought a beautiful encrusted box for Bette Birnstingl). Tomorrow we’re going to the Hemingway House – I’ve promised to send Ed a postcard – and the Geiger Mansion where Audubon (Birds of America) studied the wildlife native to the Keys.
When I think that if Addie Jacobs hadn’t slipped on the ice and broken her ankle I wouldn’t have gone to Eilat alone, and if I hadn’t gone to Eilat I wouldn’t have met Maurice, and if I hadn’t met Maurice… What I’m trying to say in my clumsy way is how unbelievable it is that I am sitting here in this paradise feeling so very happy (I am quite recovered form the ‘episode’), waiting for Maurice who has made it all possible. He says that when we get back to New York I’m not to dream of walking around alone, that he’ll take me shopping in the car, but although I’m very apprehensive I won’t let him. I worry about you often, Rachel – sometimes I don’t think of anything else. I hope you and Josh have stopped your silly nonsense. I know Hettie will take good care of you. Give her and Herbert and Mrs Klopman and all the others my love. As always, MUMMIE (KITTY MORGENTHAU!).
To Live in Peace Page 18