“When?” Kitty said.
“As long as it takes to pack.”
“Now?” Kitty said. She thought she would faint.
“Now,” Maurice said simply, and Kitty was about to speak when Beatty, escaped from the hora, arrived breathless, mopping her mottled chest.
“I’m not as young as I used to be…”
“Think about it…” Maurice relinquished Kitty’s hands and stood up. “I’ll call you tomorrow…”
“…I thought I was going to pass out.” Beatty fanned herself.
“…Around eleven,” Maurice said, leaving them.
“Who’s that?” Beatty asked, as he walked away. She didn’t wait for an answer. “There was supposed to be a sorbet,” she said, delighting in the slip-up. “Hettie told me. I could do with an ice.” She looked at the jewelled watch embedded in the bracelet of her wrist. “I’m going to phone the hospital. If I can find a phone.”
“Everyone said it’s the best wedding they’ve ever been to,” Hettie said, contentedly, when the last of the guests had disappeared into the night and a wilted Unterman stood with them in the foyer, flushed with his achievement.
“I think it went very well,” Kitty said as she waited for Josh, who was in the cloakroom, to take her home.
Upstairs the band was packing up, tables, denuded of their golden cloths, were being folded. Rachel, in her dungarees, had left with Patrick in their open-topped car. Before she had stepped into it she’d flung her arms round Kitty.
“Thank you,” Rachel said.
“For what?” Kitty’s face was wet.
“For my life.”
With their departure the zest, for Kitty, had gone out of the party.
The foyer was deserted as if there had never been a wedding.
Except for Beatty who sat motionless in a corner.
Probably eaten too much, Kitty thought, going over to her. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
“It’s Leon,” Beatty said. “He’s dead.”
Kitty would not let Josh come in although he had offered to. She wanted to be alone. She switched on the lights in the hall and went into the sitting-room where she kicked off her shoes. She stood before Maurice’s flowers, the giant gladioli and the palm fronds tied in a knot, and cast her mind back to the desert heat, to the Bedouin. ‘This is his way of saying “I love you”,’ Avi had said, ‘Later on, is coming by his very dear one. If she does nothing, she is turning him down. If she opens up the knot…’
Kitty sat down on a high-backed chair – if she sat on the sofa she would not get up again – and slowly, carefully, starting with the morning sunshine which had flooded through her window – ‘Happy is the bride that the sun shines on’, she remembered thinking – she relived the day, saving Maurice’s outrageous suggestion that she go to New York for the last.
There was something else, now. Beatty would need her. Hysterical – widowed while she danced the hora – Juda had taken her home where Mirrie, always at everyone’s beck and call, would stay the night with her.
Kitty sat for a long time in the empty room, the wedding tunes repeating themselves in her head. ‘I don’t dance,’ Maurice had said. He had nothing, really, to dance about. Kitty stood up and leaving her shoes where they lay – she was too tired to pick them up – switched off the lights until the room was illuminated only by the five branched candelabra in the hall. Its beam through the doorway fell upon Maurice’s flowers. Deliberately, in her stockinged feet, as if she had just learned to walk, Kitty moved along its length. Her final act of the long day – which, she felt, was approved of from his chair by Sydney – was slowly, carefully, with hands which had never spared themselves, to untie – God help her! – Maurice’s knot.
About the Author
Rosemary Friedman has published 25 titles including fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, which have been translated into a number of languages and serialized by the BBC, while her short stories have been syndicated worldwide. She has also written and commissioned screenplays and her stage play Home Truths and An Eligible Man toured the UK. She writes for The Guardian, The Times, The TLS and The Author.
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
A SECOND WIFE
TO LIVE IN PEACE
VINTAGE
WE ALL FALL DOWN
Copyright
Arcadia Books Ltd
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First published in 1984
This Ebook edition published by Arcadia Books 2013
Copyright © Rosemary Friedman 1984, 2001
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 978–1–909807–45–7
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Rose of Jericho Page 24