The Fruit of the Tree

by Jacquelynn Luben

  ‘It’s a good thing,’ growled Michael ‘that it wasn’t a new car!’

  Actually, it didn’t last all that much longer. It wasn’t anything I did—just old age—but before long, we were buying a new old car.

  This time it was an Austin A40, a much smaller car and much more manageable as far as I was concerned. Nevertheless, its seat adjustment was very stiff, and it was easier to prop myself forward with our old armchair cushions, which I’d also used in the Consul.

  The first day I tried it out, I didn’t quite realise how far I was from the pedals, and thus how little control I had over them. Accustomed to my old Consul’s lethargic response to my foot, I put the A40 into first gear and one touch on the accelerator sent me shooting forward, until the left hand headlight made contact with the garage door. Luckily, the door handle was level with the light, and instead of breaking down the door, I merely broke the headlight.

  ‘It’s lucky,’ said Michael with restraint when I confessed, ‘that we don’t spend our money on new cars.’

  I’ve always been able to say that I’ve only had encounters with trees and so on, on our own private land or lane—with one exception, where I must admit I look back in sheer amazement at my own foolishness.

  It was during the summer of that year, when Michael’s plumbers were taking their holidays. They all had their own vehicles, which were usually in a lot better condition than anything we possessed, and preferred to park their vans in our front drive, (which they still referred to as ‘the Yard’) rather than leave them at their homes.

  Much as I disliked trying out new vehicles, it was tempting to avoid my usual walks, even though they were fewer these days, by making use of the vans.

  I had to pluck up my courage to use Frank’s van for the first time, warning Robert that if he moved a muscle, I wouldn’t let him come with me again.

  By the time Frank’s holiday was over, I had built up some confidence, and was less reluctant to drive Les’s van, which was the next one to be deposited outside the front door.

  Michael was at home carrying out some mystery operations on the internal workings of our own car, when I took Les’s van out, this time, without Robert.

  As I turned the bend on to the main lane, I was aware of a lack of response from the brakes at my gentle pressure. By the time I reached the T-junction on to the main road, I had to pull on the hand brake to stop the car.

  I ought to have turned round—of course I ought, but the memory that flashed through my head was what had happened the last time I tried to carry out a three-point turn at that point. The other ridiculous thought that occurred to me was that I ought to improvise in some way. Michael was always improvising—I remembered him driving all the way from Sonia’s house without the use of the clutch, so I too would be undefeated by the car. Out on to the road I went.

  There is a saying that the Lord takes care of fools and children, and in this case, His ministering angels were uniformed, and driving a police car. I saw them coming towards me on the opposite side of the road, as I crept along at 20 miles an hour, with plumbing equipment—odd bits of pipe and fittings—clanking around in the back of the van.

  To this day I do not know what prompted that car to turn in its tracks and follow me, but I was not more than half a mile from home when the police car overtook me and waved me down at the side of the road. I put my feet down on everything that was available, the non-existent brakes, the clutch (which apparently was the wrong thing to do) and pulled on the hand brake, and then when there were no further actions I could take, I glided forward and finally came to a halt behind the police car, with a gentle thud, as my front bumper hit their back one.

  They leapt out of their car, whilst I sat paralysed, and rushed to inspect the damage, one of them crossly scolding me, ‘We gave you ample time to stop.’

  However, they calmed down a bit when they saw that their car was unscathed.

  I explained to them about the brakes, but not quite everything—I’m afraid I had to give the impression I had only just discovered that they weren’t working.

  ‘We’ll have to take you home,’ they said. And even then I rather foolishly asked: ‘Couldn’t I just turn it round and drive it straight home?’

  ‘Oh no, madam,’ they replied. ‘We couldn’t possibly let you do that.’

  And that is how I came to appear before Michael with a very tall policeman on each side of me; and how subsequently I received my first (and only) endorsement on my driving licence; and how—to his extreme annoyance—Michael, as the owner of the van, received a similar smudge, and an even bigger fine than me!

  I didn’t confess the entire truth to him either, and so for some time afterwards he could be heard to say, ‘I just can’t understand how you could drive onto the main road without checking the brakes.’

  10. A Crisis Passes

  With increased mobility, I began to make friends locally. I developed a friendship with Carol, a girl who had once done some secretarial work for Michael and who had a son of Robert’s age. Her sister Jill also had a boy, some six months older. It was a great delight to me that I could at last arrange some form of social life for Robert at the same time as enjoying pleasant adult company myself.

  With the advent of spring and summer, the great outdoors beckoned, and we tended to see more of our neighbours, Doug and Beryl. On one occasion, Beryl called to me through the hedge and offered me some bean seeds, preserved from last year’s crop, which apparently were an extremely good strain.

  Like ‘Jack’, I was at a loss to know what to do with them. But I don’t like things weighing on my conscience, so I dug a small hole at the side of the garden and dropped them in. To be truthful, it was more of a burial than a planting.

  When I told Michael, he made me dig them up and replant them, and even then it wasn’t right, and I had to dig and rake a patch of ground and put them all in again at regular intervals. Despite this lack of care, they flourished and Michael found two lengths of scrap iron and arranged a sort of metal arch for them to entwine themselves around.

  The excitement of seeing these things actually green and growing brought out long buried yearnings to cultivate the soil, for I hadn’t lived in a house with a garden since I was eleven years old. Now I was filled with a desire to see grass in the garden, and Michael and I went out there with various implements and started hacking away at the weeds and levelling out the bumps.

  Pessimistically, Michael (who had once suggested we concrete the entire area) decided we had better attempt to clear and seed one quarter of the garden initially and try some more another year. I thought it sounded a silly idea, but it seemed wise to dig first and argue after.

  One Sunday, we could hardly bear to tear ourselves away from the task to go visiting friends, and I couldn’t have been more surprised at my own attachment to the place and to the job at hand.

  One day, a dark stranger knocked at our door and offered his services as a gardener. Michael seized upon him like a long lost friend, and even though I was rather sad to lose my new interest, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the speed with which the garden took on a new look. Guiseppe, for such was his name, was superseded by another Guiseppe, and when once or twice a large job needed to be carried out, a whole team of brothers and cousins all apparently named Guiseppe appeared on the scene.

  The soil was dug and rolled and raked and rolled again, and one day I sat on the smooth earth with Robert, peering through the hedge at Doug and Beryl’s fine lawn and putting green.

  ‘Look Robert—soon we’re going to have grass like that.’

  No turf for us; Guiseppe the second, with a washing up bowl under one arm, carefully broadcast the seed over the tilled soil and soon—lo and behold, the first velvety fronds of new grass appeared—a pale green haze over the entire garden. We were not to tread upon this first precious grass for many weeks, but that was a small sacrifice.

  Next we bought fruit trees, which Guiseppe implanted along the edge of the newly
dug vegetable garden, and rose bushes under our great trees in the centre of the drive. It was the Garden of Eden all over again.

  * * *

  Robert was nearly three and I hadn’t done anything about play-school—an essential for such an isolated child.

  I received the necessary push one day, when Carol rang to say her son was starting at a newly opening play-school in September and would Robert like to join him. I liked the idea of Robert having support in the shape of friends already known to him. But there were disadvantages; the school was run in a church hall, and I wondered how much Robert would learn of Christian practices and whether he would be alienated from his Jewish background. But in the end, I found that he only learned to recite:

  ‘Thank You for the food we eat.

  Thank You for the world so sweet;….’

  This innocent prayer in no way conflicted with the Jewish blessings that we sometimes taught to Robert:

  ‘Blessed art Thou, Oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has created the fruit of the earth—of the vine—of the tree.’

  The world did indeed seem sweet that year, for so many of our problems had been solved. Michael’s business was taken over, and though he sacrificed the freedom of being his own boss, it was for the security of a salaried post. We shared the car and I was no longer a prisoner in my own home, and I discovered the special joy of creation in the garden.

  Everyone gave us things to grow; I was thrilled to receive dozens of daffodil bulbs from my sister-in-law, Sonia, for there is something very special to me about flowers the colour of sunshine, which show themselves when winter is only just departing.

  Auntie Ethel, a keen gardener herself, gave me half a dozen rootless fuchsia cuttings from her garden in Hove, where they grew in profusion. She often took cuttings and simply stuck them in the earth and they flourished. I always regarded it as a small miracle that they would create their own roots in an attempt to survive. In fact, much of what took place in the garden was miraculous to me.

  The pleasure of our efforts was marred for me by a cloud—a small irritating worry that grew and grew as the months went by. Until I could put it out of my mind no longer.

  Every time I snuggled up to Michael in the night I was conscious of a lump in his chest almost under his arm. I wasn’t sure of how long it had been there—but it was too long.

  Many times I had said to him, ‘Shouldn’t you find out about that?’

  ‘Yes, I will—I’ll get round to it some time.’ came the reply.

  I was in the doctor’s surgery about five weeks before Christmas as I had a suspicion that I might be pregnant. Casually, I mentioned the lump.

  ‘Should he come and see you?’ I asked hesitantly.

  ‘Yes, he must see me,’ my doctor replied briskly. ‘Get him to come along as soon as possible.’

  In the four weeks that followed, Michael saw the doctor, attended hospital, was X-rayed and it was arranged that he should go into hospital for exploratory surgery on the day after Boxing Day.

  Unasked, the Aunts from Hove suddenly rang and offered to stay with me while Michael was in hospital, and what a lift to my spirits that was.

  Michael, Robert and I spent Boxing Day with Geoffrey and Karla and most of the rest of the family. Towards the evening, it started snowing and, reluctantly, we decided to leave early.

  ‘I’m sorry to push you,’ said Michael, recognising as always my enjoyment of these family ‘get-togethers’. ‘But we dare not take any risks about getting back tonight.’

  As it happened, the roads had been efficiently cleared and we got home without difficulty. We didn’t rush to get up, next morning. Even though the Aunties were coming, I thought it was more important for Michael to have an opportunity to relax rather than to have a tidy house and meal prepared.

  By the end of the afternoon, the Aunties had arrived, we had eaten and we had watched a film on the television (which by now had an aerial). Michael was almost too relaxed to be true—it was I that was on tenterhooks, for he showed no interest in getting to the hospital.

  I kept warning him that he’d get told off if he was late—there were a remarkably large number of bossy hospital sisters. I warned him he must expect to stay in bed in his pyjamas and behave himself. I offered to bring him chocolates, fruit, sandwiches and, based on my father’s many experiences of hospitals, eggs for breakfast.

  Because of my reluctance to drive all the way back from the hospital on my own, we parked the car at Guildford station and took a train the rest of the way. From there we walked the half-mile journey to the hospital itself, in almost pitch darkness, through an area entirely covered by snow. The chest hospital, originally built for sufferers of T.B., had been placed deliberately in an area of open fields, where the air was pure. Unfortunately, as far as I was concerned, it was terrifyingly isolated.

  In the warmth of the hospital, we were greeted by an attractive and pleasant young woman, who was very far from the bossy sister image that I had presented to Michael. She offered us both tea and apologetically brought Michael some poached eggs on toast, which they had tried to keep warm for him, not knowing what time he was coming in.

  She went through the usual great list of questions to be answered on entering hospital, and Michael joked his way through them, so that when she got to ‘Religion’ and he said he was Jewish, she thought he was still joking and turned to me for verification.

  Then she tried to get me a taxi, but having failed, to my surprise, she allowed Michael to take me back to the station. This was like no hospital I’d ever been in.

  Unfortunately, we lost our way and arrived at a completely different station, one stop further along, and eventually parted company, waving to each other from opposite sides of the track.

  When I arrived at the hospital next day, after Michael’s operation, he was sleeping like a baby, but as I bustled around with my supplies of fruit and chocolate, he gradually awoke and I helped him to sit up.

  The friendly sister appeared with a small glass of liquid, which she proffered to Michael.

  ‘Here’s your jungle juice,’ she said smiling. We were both intrigued and Michael took a tentative sip, and with the facial expression of a connoisseur of wines, tasting an unusual flavour, offered it to me.

  But the sister shook her head swiftly—‘No, not you—not in your condition. It’s just a pain killer.’

  I smiled—Michael apparently hadn’t been able to resist talking about the pregnancy, although it was only two months under way. Despite the hormone tablets I was now receiving from the doctor, I was wary and reluctant to tell the news to anyone until the three-months' hurdle had passed.

  In the meantime, it was the other lump that was the subject of my concern and I now asked the sister when we would know the facts about this.

  ‘It’ll be examined by the Path. Lab in the morning,’ she told us, ‘but it seems almost certain that it’s just a fatty lump.’

  During those few days, the Aunties ran the house, cooked meals, ironed clothes and looked after Robert, and I was able to spend hours at the hospital, instead of the usual inadequate half-hour.

  The car behaved badly, like a dog without its master, developing a slipping clutch and a flat battery, so that each night I despaired of either starting the thing or getting it home from the station.

  The Aunties, being non-drivers themselves, were not fully aware of the difficulties I was having, but they worried about me driving through the snow-covered, isolated country roads, and always welcomed me home with relief at the end of each excursion. On my arrival, they had a meal waiting for me and they would tell me anecdotes of how they had coped with the household chores, and how Robert had advised on where to find tea-towels and saucepans and other necessities.

  Robert couldn’t always quite work out which aunt was which, though Auntie Betty was short and plump and Auntie Ethel was taller and slimmer, with glasses. Nevertheless, they were special to him and he was happy to act as host to them. They, in their tur
n, loved to tell me of the clever things he had managed to do in my absence at the hospital.

  By the end of the second day, it was confirmed that the lump was benign, and when I drove home from the station, my heart was a great deal lighter.

  After I had made numerous reassuring telephone calls to the family, the aunts and I played cards into the night. I got up late next morning, and before the beds had been made or Robert changed out of his pyjamas, a strange car appeared and Michael was deposited at the doorstep by a volunteer driver.

  It was a wonderful surprise to have him returned to us so quickly, but I was most upset by his immediate criticism of the state of the house and Robert; he was always obsessed by unmade beds, and hated me to show up in a bad light to other people, even intimate family such as the Aunties.

  Triggered off, no doubt, by a mixture of relief, irritation and pregnancy, I burst into tears, and despite the Aunties’ efforts to console me, sobbed and sobbed until Michael was quite contrite.

  He didn’t believe that the car was unreliable, of course, and despite being warned by the hospital not to drive immediately, he took it out and arrived home some time later towed by one of the plumbers, to whom he had had to walk to get help, with that day’s newspaper under his sweater to provide extra warmth in the latest snow shower.

  The next day, the Aunties left, having done all they could for us. It was New Year’s Eve and this time, there really did seem cause to welcome the coming year with optimism.

  11. Rita

  I had fully expected to carry on taking hormone tablets throughout my pregnancy, but once my usual danger point had passed without problems, I received no more, and as the time passed, my confidence expanded.

  By the time I was four and a half months pregnant, I was quite happy to contemplate a trip to Colchester with Michael to deal with a business problem. It would be a full day trip, so we decided to leave Robert with Sonia and collect him from her home in the evening.

  The night before the planned trip, the telephone rang as I was watching the television. I realised from Michael’s end of the conversation that it was Roger, and I remembered then that Ruth’s sister Rita was in hospital, having had a major operation on her hip. I had intended to write to her, but I hadn’t got round to it.