by Maisie Mosco
On the bleak, January day when Martin returned home, the King was lying on his deathbed at Sandringham and Miriam cancelled the family celebration she had planned.
The impending national bereavement had cast its shadow on the Jewish community, prayers for the King’s recovery were said in the synagogues and naturalized subjects like Abraham Sandberg and Sigmund Moritz, for whom England had been a haven from oppression, grieved for the beneficent monarch who had ascended the throne during their early-immigrant days.
“Only a few months ago it was his Silver Jubilee,” Abraham said sorrowfully after he and Sarah had listened to the bulletin on the wireless which told them George V was dead. “A nice start to 1936 this is,” he sighed. “But what can you do? Two kings we’ve seen in the years we’ve been here. Royalty are only human.”
“And thank God what they stand for in this country doesn’t change from one to the next,” Sarah declared fervently. “Everything goes on like it did before, not like it was with the Tsars.”
“With those barbarians things always went from bad to worse!”
Sarah watched her husband put on a black tie to mourn for the King. “Edward VII died just before our Nat was born and now his son’s passed away when Nat’s child is due,” she reflected. “Maybe it’s bershert for Nat to call the baby after the King, like we gave him Edward for his second name.”
Abraham swallowed down the strong dose of Glauber salts with which he always started the day and reached for the cup of tea Sarah had poured for him, to take the taste away. “Rebecca wants to call the baby Leon if it’s a boy,” he reminded her.
“And why not? It was her single name and she has no brothers to carry it on. So, what’s wrong with Leon George Sandberg? To me it sounds very nice.”
Rebecca wondered if George V’s namesake had decided to arrive a week early when a sharp twinge shot from her womb into the small of her back, while she waited for Carl and Hannah’s marriage ceremony to begin. Her mother-in-law and Esther were seated beside her, and Sarah had just voiced her disapproval of the synagogue being unadorned with flowers for a wedding.
“So, Hannah doesn’t believe in a big fuss,” Esther shrugged.
“A register office she’d have got married in if she’d had her way!” Sarah said tartly.
Carl’s prediction of the effect Hannah would have upon her had materialized at their first meeting.
“God she doesn’t believe in, either!” Sarah went on. “When she told me, I nearly fainted.”
“She’s a very unusual woman, Ma,” Rebecca said placatingly. “Perhaps it’s because she went to university.”
“So, did your husband, but his Maker he hasn’t yet abandoned,” Sarah replied. “And such a short engagement as Hannah and Carl’s I never heard of. With my children I wouldn’t allow it.”
Esther shared a smile with Rebecca and adjusted the silver-fox tie Ben had given her for her birthday, enjoying the luxurious feel of it. She still didn’t know how he had managed to pay for it but looked superb with her black coat and eye-veiled hat and for once she didn’t care.
“You can know a person all your life, Mother, and still make a mistake,” she said. “Like Carl and I nearly did. Thank God I had the sense to break our engagement and marry Ben. And in my opinion, Hannah’s the right girl for Carl.”
“She’s got peculiar notions if that’s what you mean. A navy-blue costume to get married in?” Sarah gasped when Hannah entered on Sammy’s arm. “With a green hat and blouse!”
She surveyed the rest of the bridal entourage with more pleasure. Having no family of her own, Hannah had asked Miriam and Sammy to accompany her under the marriage canopy and nobody could say Miriam did not look right for the occasion, Sarah thought eyeing her daughter-in-law’s soft, cream dress and matching turban.
Helga was matron-of-honour in dusky-pink and had made her own outfit and her sister’s, as she had been doing since they were girls. She had offered to make a wedding-dress for Hannah, but the unconventional young woman had refused to wear one. Despite this, Helga and Miriam had decided to wear what was suitable for the occasion. Not for anything would they have let their dead mother down.
Sarah was thinking of their mother as she watched Sigmund take his place beside Carl, with his new wife. Life has to go on, she thought to herself with a sigh. But he was already showing signs of not being happy with her. “At least Hannah agreed to have bridesmaids,” she said, admiring her granddaughters, who were positioning themselves self-consciously. “Even if their frocks don’t match.”
The little girls’ dresses were the same style, but Marianne’s was lavender and Shirley’s lemon.
Esther laughed and wished she could get up and straighten the slippery satin bow in her daughter’s hair. “Hannah didn’t want them to match,” she told Sarah.
“I’m not surprised.”
The reception was held at Helga’s.
“Smoked salmon they can’t afford!” Gertie Moritz, whom the family still privately called Gertie Fish, sniffed, eyeing the refreshments Helga and Miriam had prepared. She sat down beside Sarah. “And if I’d known Carl’s bride would not be wearing white, I wouldn’t have stood under the Chupah with him.”
“Seeing you are his father’s wife, you had no choice,” Sarah replied crisply. Her own disapproval of Hannah was no reason to ally herself with the monstrous Gertie.
Sarah helped herself to a chopped-herring sandwich and let her eye wander around the room. The brass candlesticks on the table, in which Carl and Hannah’s wedding-day candles were burning brightly, had been brought from Vienna by Rachel Moritz, but had not lost their lustre. Helga had preserved them as she had the homely atmosphere that had always pervaded this household and had no life outside it. What would she do now she was no longer needed here?
David was considering this, too, and hoped he knew the answer. He had just seen Moishe Lipkin follow Helga into the scullery. A few minutes later Moishe returned alone, looking gloomy, and David ushered him into the lobby for a private word.
“Helga said no to you again?” he said sympathetically.
Moishe straightened his grey silk tie in front of the hallstand mirror and nodded. “They want her to stay,” he sighed thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets and leaning against the wall disconsolately.
“And what about what she wants?”
“You know Helga. When did she ever put herself number one? First it was her mother, then her father and next her brother. Now, she’s thinking of Carl and Hannah’s children, would you believe?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Neither would I, but it’s true. She said if she was going to marry anyone it’d be me. But Hannah told her she’ll never have any kids if it means giving up her career to look after them. That was all Helga needed to hear.”
“She’s still young enough to have her own!” David expostulated.
“That’s what I said to her, but it did no good.”
“I’ll have a talk with her if you like.”
Moishe knew David’s reputation as the family “fixer” and smiled gratefully. “This is something even you can’t arrange or believe me I’d let you. Helga’s always been a mug for other people and she wouldn’t keep on being one unless she enjoyed it, some folk are like that. She’s here for life. So, I won’t have a wife on my conscience when I’m away travelling,” he shrugged with a wry grin. “Let’s go back inside and have a schnapps on it.”
Bessie drew David aside as he entered the crowded room. “Rebecca thinks her labour’s started. But she’s only told me, she hasn’t told Nat.”
David saw his young sister-in-law bite her lip and put down her tea cup. His mother would have recognized the signs immediately, but she was seated with Esther on the other side of the table and a big vase of flowers in the centre was shielding Rebecca from their view. Nathan was beside the window, talking to Lou and Cora.
“Perhaps you should tell him?” Bessie said playing with her pearls anxiously.
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br /> “I think we should keep out of it,” David replied. Even in a matter like this his brother was capable of accusing him of interfering.
Rebecca said nothing to Nathan until they were driving home. “Everyone would have fussed around me,” she said after she had told him. “I didn’t want to spoil Hannah’s wedding day,” she added, and the poignancy of her smile made Nathan think she was remembering her own.
How naïve I was then, Rebecca reflected. And how trusting.
“If you don’t fancy him, you don’t have to have him,” her parents had said when the matchmaker arranged a meeting with Nathan. He’d been the first suitor she had agreed to meet, and she had only done so because her father wanted her to marry a professional man and had finally worn her down. But she’d fallen for Nat the moment he walked into her home and appraised her with his soft, dark eyes. Not like her sister, who’d turned down two doctors and an accountant before settling for a good-looking solicitor.
I was happy at first, she thought, fingering the silky, brown ermine shrouding the rise of her abdomen in which lay the child she had believed was the proof of their love for each other.
“All right?” Nathan asked in the kind of voice she had heard him use when addressing his patients.
Rebecca nodded and smiled to herself bitterly. Happy in her ignorance, that’s what she’d been. Thinking she’d kindled the same fire in him that he had in her. But now she knew he loved someone else; that all she had aroused in him was lust, which a man could feel for any woman, and the baby was proof of nothing more than that.
Nathan kept his eyes on the road, aware of his wife’s unspoken reproach. She had plenty to reproach him for, but what could he do about it? Other than be completely honest with her, which wouldn’t help. Instead he gave vent to jibes and innuendo whenever the pretence his marriage was became unbearable, hurting and confusing Rebecca in order to relieve his own feelings, then resuming their uneasy relationship until the next flare-up.
Re-encountering Mary in his family’s presence had brought home to him how far they had moved apart, and he’d thought of her less often since then. Perhaps because the warm, affectionate girl who had obsessed his thoughts no longer existed. In her place was a cool, abrasive woman who, except for a brief moment, had avoided looking at him. So why couldn’t he love Rebecca and make her happy, like Lou had done with his wife? Cora was plain and dumpy, but her father Harry Rothberg owned property as well as a rainwear factory, and her dowry had enabled Lou to find something lovable in her. A few weeks ago, she’d given Lou a son, which seemed to have enhanced his manufactured feelings for her. To hear him talk about his wife these days you’d think their marriage had been a love match!
I’m not capable of manufacturing feelings, that’s my trouble, Nathan said to himself dispassionately. Then he saw Rebecca blanch as another pain gripped her and he was beset by guilt because he had brought this upon her. He’d have to try to be, for the sake of his wife and child.
“Everything’s going to be fine, love,” he said determinedly when they arrived home. “After the baby’s born we won’t be on edge with each other like we’ve been lately.” He took her coat to hang it in the cloakroom and did not see the look she gave him.
Bridie had just returned from her Sunday evening out and was hovering in the hall, eyeing her mistress speculatively. “Twon’t be long now, Doctor-surr,” she pronounced.
But Rebecca’s labour continued for three days.
“My Cora, bless her, had more mazel, having our Philip so quickly,” Lou commiserated while he sat playing pisha-paysha with Nathan on the third evening.
“Luck’s your middle name, Lou. For you everything’s easy, but for me it’s always the hard way,” Nathan said abandoning the card game and getting up to pace the room. “If Rebecca was someone else’s wife she’d probably be out of her misery by now.”
“Come off it, Nat!”
“And she won’t even let me sit with her, will she?” Nathan exclaimed.
His placid friend poured him a whisky and made him drink it. “She will when it’s over, and then I can have a drink, too,” he declared crossing his fingers as Bridie summoned him upstairs.
Rebecca had refused to have a midwife attend her and Nathan was thankful for the maid’s reliable presence in the house. Bridie must think it strange that his family weren’t rallying around him, but Rebecca liked her privacy and had asked him to tell everyone but Bessie not to come.
Why his disagreeable sister-in-law was the exception, he had no idea. His mother and Miriam would gladly have left their households, to be with his wife during her travail, but he had thought it best to humour her. David had brought Bessie each morning before going to work and collected her in the evening when Nathan returned from the surgery. Life was still conspiring to put him in his brother’s debt!
The cry a of new-born infant cut into his thoughts, then he heard Bridie shout joyfully from the upstairs landing. “’Tis a girl, Doctor-surr! An’ as bonny as iver ye did see!”
Nathan sat numbly by the fire listening to the clock tick away fifteen minutes. Rebecca would not want him in the room yet. When he went upstairs, she was wearing an oyster-satin night-gown and Bridie was brushing her hair.
“You don’t look as if you’ve just given birth,” he smiled kissing her cheek.
Lou was rolling down his shirtsleeves. “What’s that in the cradle, then?”
Nathan turned to look at his daughter. “She’s got red hair,” he said sounding surprised.
“It’s in the family, you can’t blame the milkman,” Lou grinned. “Pick her up already!”
Nathan eyed the infant nervously.
“Anyone’d think he’d never held one before,” his friend teased.
Handling babies is part of a doctor’s routine, but it’s different when it’s your own, Nathan thought, lifting the tiny bundle and cradling it against him. It was not just a thought, but a sensation, too, that clutched at your entrails and turned you to jelly.
“How does it feel?” Lou inquired.
Nathan touched his daughter’s fragile hand and felt it close around his thumb and it was as if she had taken hold of his heart. He surrendered himself to the primeval emotion, unknown to him until that moment. “Marvellous,” he said swallowing hard.
“But we can’t call a girl Leon George, can we?” he laughed to Rebecca. “She’ll have to be Leona Georgina.”
“Whatever you like, Nat.”
“I was joking, love.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course, it matters.”
“All right. We’ll call her that.”
“Are you sure you want to? We don’t have to decide this minute,” Nathan said.
“The name’s all right, stop making such a fuss about it,” Rebecca answered irritably.
“Put Leona back in the cradle, Nat,” Lou interceded. “We’ll go downstairs and let Rebecca rest. Bridie can bring her a nice glass of milk.”
“I don’t want any milk.”
“It isn’t for you,” Lou smiled. “It’s for the baby.”
“I’m not going to feed the baby.”
There was a moment of silence while Nathan and Lou avoided looking at each other and Bridie stood twisting a corner of her apron, with a shocked expression on her face.
Lou began packing his medical bag. “What do you mean you’re not going to feed the baby?” he said to Rebecca.
“I don’t want to,” she replied studying her fingernails.
Nathan was aware of a new tenderness spilling over to his wife from his feeling for their child. “Every mother breastfeeds if she can, love,” he said gently.
“And Rebecca won’t have any trouble,” Lou added, casting a professional glance at her full, blue-veined cleavage. “She’ll change her mind,” he told Nathan as they walked downstairs.
But Rebecca did not change her mind and when Sarah called to see her new granddaughter, Bridie opened the front door with a full breast pump clutch
ed in her hand.
“’Tis a tirrible waste t’throw it away, ma’am,” Bridie said grimly.
“So, what can you do?” Sarah sighed. Nathan had called to see her whilst doing his rounds and told her about it. When she entered the bedroom, Bessie was giving Leona a bottle. Rebecca was lying reading.
“You don’t want to feed her the bottle either, Rebecca?” Sarah said. “So, what is a mother for?”
“I hope you haven’t come to lecture me, Ma.”
“Anyone can hold a bottle, it doesn’t have to be the mother,” Bessie declared. “You can give it to her if you like, Ma.”
“No thanks.”
Sarah’s disapproval changed to disquiet. She stayed for an hour and noticed that Rebecca did not glance at the baby once.
“Who looks after Leona when Bessie’s gone home and Bridie’s asleep in bed?” she asked Nathan the next time she saw him alone.
“Who do you think? But I don’t mind, Mother,” Nathan smiled. His love for his child had deepened day by day and getting up during the night to attend to her was no trouble to him.
Early one morning, when he had fed the baby and was changing her diaper, he was called to a patient who had had a seizure. “You’ll have to finish cleaning Leona up,” he said to Rebecca, donning pullover and trousers over his pyjamas and hurrying away.
When he returned, the baby was lying exactly as he had left her, her thighs and bottom crusted with the stool he had not had time to clean away, and now blue with cold.
Rebecca was lying in bed with her back towards the cradle.
“How could you leave a young baby in a state like that? She wasn’t even covered!” Nathan rebuked her and began rubbing Leona’s legs to restore the circulation.
“It was you who left her like that.”
“But I asked you to see to her, didn’t I? What would happen to her if Bridie and Bessie weren’t here during the day?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Nathan asked angrily. “You’d have to do what they’ve been doing, look after your child, like every other mother does. You weren’t lazy before Leona was born.”