Exhausted as she was from the last minute hassles entailed in the giving up of Maurice’s apartment and the social whirl of the past week, she was wide awake as those around her slept with the excitement of being reunited with her family. Herb and Ed and Mort and Bette and even Joe, who unable to speak had watched Maurice’s departure with tears in his eyes, had not wanted to let them go, clung on to them as long as possible. Bette had thrown a party for them in her apartment at which Maurice, surprisingly, had been the life and soul, and Kitty thought what a pity that they were leaving just when he and Bette looked like becoming friends.
Herb had prepared a farewell dinner for them in Maurice’s kitchen, serving, to Kitty’s amusement, her own chopped liver recipe (now included in his culinary repertoire), followed by Breast of Chicken Sauté à la Herb (sherry, palm hearts and shallots) accompanied by a Marbre de Legumes which had entailed a labour of love to do with layers of zucchini and kohlrabi and small leeks and little green beans and red peppers and beef bouillon (painstakingly made with beef shank and vegetables), assembled in a mould and refrigerated overnight, followed by the Pecan Pie with Caramel Sauce which was his pièce de résistance.
Mort had treated them all to the best seats at “42nd Street” and Ed – at ridiculous expense, Kitty thought – had taken them to dinner at Laserre at which he had announced his engagement to Bette Birnstingl. It had been a night to remember, the apotheosis of her stay, during which she realised with surprise what a good time she had had in New York, about which she had at first been so apprehensive, and how very much she was going to miss her transatlantic family.
By the day of their departure the elation engendered by the celebrations had subsided. Herb and Mort, and Ed with Bette, had wandered miserably among the packing cases and while she and Maurice nervously put together their last minute things the conversation was desultory. Mort produced a bottle of whisky and dispensed it into the rinsed out breakfast cups.
“To good times,” he said, raising his to his lips.
“Bon Voyage,” Herb said.
“Auf Simchas.” Ed looked at Bette.
“Le Hayim!” There was a break in Maurice’s voice. Kitty did not underestimate how much he was giving up for her. She had had a taste in the past months of what it meant to uproot yourself.
As she put her coat on, Bette had shed a tear. She handed Kitty a package. “To remember me by.”
“Did you think I’d forget?” Kitty said as they embraced. Bette’s gift-wrapped parcel lay on her lap together with the In Flight magazine at which, too busy with her thoughts, she had not even glanced.
She untied the ribbon, took the small box from its paper. A piece of costume jewellery, two entwined hearts in gold, winked in the reading light.
Kitty put the brooch in her lapel and Maurice, who she had thought was sleeping, fastened it for her, brushing her face with his lips before leaning back in his seat.
There was no sound in the side-room they had given Rachel. Her body was weightless, seeming to be one with the mattress. She was not dead. She noticed her hand on the counterpane and that there was something strange about it, then that it was not her hand that was unfamiliar but the fact that the bedclothes, the thin cotton hospital blankets, lay flat. There was no bump. She turned her head, half a turn. A cradle, sloping, at an angle. Her absent thoughts made a halo outside her head. One by one, with difficulty, she gathered them in. There was one to do with Tiffany’s, and Herbert – such an old joke, she must have heard it a hundred times – and old Mrs Klopman. An ambulance siren. Her nephew Mathew had referred to the sound as the “nee-naw” when he was an infant, running in fear whenever he heard it to bury his head in Carol’s lap. Nurses with wavy faces, advancing and retreating. Pre-eclampsia. They kept repeating it. Pre-eclampsia. And caesarean section. She’d tried to tell them that her name was Rachel Klopman – waiting for the reaction – that her notes quite categorically stipulated natural childbirth to the accompaniment of “Ten Green Bottles”, encouraged by Patrick, her labour partner.
Patrick had come. And gone. She did not remember any “Ten Green Bottles” yet she could see her toes beneath the counterpane. The cradle. Beside the bed. Belonged to her. Mrs Klopman. Mrs Klopman. You have a beautiful daughter. Ridiculous. You couldn’t call a girl Sydney. What then? The decision entailed more than the bestowing of a name. It included the act of creating images and symbols, interpreting perceived reality, telling a personal and communal story. The cradle was still. Quiet. Panicking, Rachel raised herself on her elbow. Her stomach was stiff, sore. There was a bundle. Gritting her teeth, she lifted it onto the bed.
A great delirium consumed her. An almost embarrassing ecstasy as she looked for the first time at her child. Daring, she raised the bundle to her face, kissed the cheek, the long eyelashes – Patrick’s – unfolded the minuscule fingers with their papery nails, looked for the first momentous time into the speculative eyes of her daughter. It was a moment of understanding: that every mother contains her daughter in herself, and every daughter her mother, and every woman extends backwards into her mother, and forwards into her daughter. In that instant she understood Kitty utterly for the first time, and knew exactly – for her womb contracted achingly – how she would feel when her daughter left, unthinking, with her knapsack on her back, for the world. Life, Rachel thought, was spread out over generations. She would call her daughter Rebecca, after the matriarch Rebecca, Sidonie (for her father), Hephzibah, “My pleasure is in her”, as she recognised with every fibre of her being, every nerve ending, that it would be.
Putting her child to her breast Rachel realised, with sudden clarity, that there were decisions to be taken, choices to be made, and that life as she and Patrick had known it would never be the same again.
In the Visitors’ Room – the dog-eared magazines long time expired, Maurice motionless by the window – Kitty, still in her travelling clothes, waited to see Rachel. For the umpteenth time she went over in her mind the jumbled events of the past hours. As soon as she had seen Josh’s face as he waited by the barrier, hemmed in by the airport crowds, she had known that something was wrong. They had come straight to the hospital. Maurice had been wonderful. He had explained to her about pre-eclampsia. Kitty bombarded him with questions. Could it have been avoided? (She blamed herself for going to New York.) Should Rachel have eaten better? Shouldn’t the doctors have spotted it sooner? Maurice said that as far as he knew – and he was not an expert – the condition had to do with the body’s immune system, and that the word itself meant “before a fit”, which was what, as far as Kitty could in her jet-lagged mind make out, had happened to Rachel at Hettie Klopman’s. The swollen legs had been a precursor.
Kitty blamed herself. She had told Rachel enough times to be sensible like Carol, to put herself in the capable hands of Morris Goldapple. It wouldn’t have made any difference, Maurice said, but Kitty had had her own theories. Anyway, thank God, everything had ended well and she had a new granddaughter whom, when they had once more checked Rachel’s blood pressure, she would be allowed to see.
She had come home with a vengeance. The shock about Rachel – her heart had turned over – then the news about Herbert Klopman. The reins of her life were in her hands before she had had time to pick them up. There was so much to do. Rachel would need looking after now; a Caesar was no joke, you needed time to recover, and she could hardly go back to Hettie’s. Poor Hettie. Kitty knew, too well, what it meant to be a widow. Glancing at Maurice to reassure herself, she determined that she would slowly, gently, when she had got over the first shock, take Hettie – giving her the benefit of her own experience – in hand.
Then there was Beatty. She had had her mastectomy, and every day, according to Josh, asked when Kitty was coming. Beatty was a shadow of her former self, he had said, and Kitty had understood that he was preparing her. Beatty would have to be encouraged, nourished, nursed back to whatever health was available to her.
Josh’s own baby was due next, the son wh
o was to be born in his mother’s bed. Kitty didn’t hold with that and doubted whether Sarah’s mother – assuming she could tear herself away from Leicester – was going to be much help. She knew very well who it was who was going to do all the shopping and cooking and running to and fro.
After that there’d be the twins, Carol would need some help, and Alec, perhaps her biggest problem. The interior decorator had taken off for Los Angeles permanently with her husband, but Carol was adamant: she would not take Alec back. There was a situation which had to be handled with the tact of a Habib, the diplomacy of a Kissinger. Kitty saw no reason why, given time and the right handling, Carol and Alec shouldn’t eventually be installed in the Queen Anne house with their growing family round them. Alec was a broken man, Josh had told her, but he would get over it. It wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened. It was Carol who would need all the reassurance, all the love and support Kitty could muster.
It was as if her time in New York, the honeymoon in Florida, had never been. As if it had been a dream and, like a dream, was fading. She had to force herself to think of Maurice’s apartment, her ordeal at the hands of her assailants in the graffiti-covered street, of her surrogate family, Herb and Ed and Mort and Bette. As soon as everything calmed down (if it ever did), as soon as she had dealt satisfactorily with her quiver full of problems, she would invite Bette to stay with her, show her London – which she scarcely knew herself – as Bette had shown her New York.
There was another imbroglio: Rachel and Josh. She couldn’t have them at each other’s throats, not speaking, when with their new families, cousins, they would have so much to offer each other. Life was too short. That their views about Israel were diametrically opposed, she understood. So what? It didn’t mean they couldn’t be in the same room, couldn’t speak to each other. She was a Zionist. It was a good thing for the Jewish people to return to the land of Israel, and bad for them to be scattered among the nations, for the family to be divided. There were ten, maybe fifteen million Jews in the world. Didn’t they deserve a country hardly a quarter the size of Syria? Didn’t the Arabs have enough countries? She would enlist the help of Maurice in resolving the delicate situation, knowing that first she would have to work on the acceptance of her new, her dear husband, by Rachel. She wasn’t going to put up with any friction there either.
Waiting for the nurse to summon her to Rachel, Kitty saw herself arrived from the new world, an emissary really, for her family, for Israel. If Kitty Shelton had anything to do with it, both of them, God willing, given time, would live in peace. She looked at Maurice silhouetted against the window.
Everything was possible.
She was no longer alone.
About the Author
Rosemary Friedman has published 21 novels – which have been widely translated and serialised by the BBC – three works of non-fiction and two children’s books. Her short stories have been syndicated worldwide and she has judged many literary prizes. She has written and commissioned screenplays and television scripts in the UK and the US. Her stage plays Home Truths, Change of Heart and An Eligible Man toured major UK venues following their London premières. She lives in London with her husband, psychiatrist and author Dennis Friedman.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ALSO ON EBOOK BY ARCADIA BOOKS
THE COMMONPLACE DAY
AN ELIGIBLE MAN
THE FRATERNITY
THE GENERAL PRACTICE
GOLDEN BOY
INTENSIVE CARE
THE LIFE SITUATION
THE LONG HOT SUMMER
LOVE ON MY LIST
A LOVING MISTRESS
NO WHITE COAT
PATIENTS OF A SAINT
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
PROOFS OF AFFECTION
ROSE OF JERICHO
A SECOND WIFE
VINTAGE
WE ALL FALL DOWN
Copyright
Arcadia Books Ltd
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First published in 2001 by House of Stratus
This Ebook edition published by Arcadia Books 2013
Copyright © Rosemary Friedman 1987, 2001, 2013
Rosemary Friedman has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–910050–11–8
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To Live in Peace Page 22