Scattered Seed

by Maisie Mosco

  They collected Ben and the boys and went downstairs to the restaurant, where a young man in a tuxedo was tinkling a piano amid the potted palms.

  “Peter and I had baths and spent the rest of the day talking,” Ronald said while they were studying the menu.

  “And can my son talk!” David quipped to Peter.

  Peter smiled.

  Thank goodness he still can, David thought.

  “I am the same. Is it not so, Ronald?”

  “I’d say you were worse.”

  “Possibly. I enjoyed our conversation immensely. It was just as it was at home, with my best friend.”

  “Peter’s going to help me with my German, Dad,” Ronald said.

  “And Ronald will assist me with my English. He says I must learn to say ‘won’t’ instead of ‘will not’. Such items as that I need to practise.”

  David and Ben shared an amused glance.

  “When we first got here, we couldn’t speak English at all,” David told Peter.

  “And we still don’t speak it as well as Peter does,” Ben added wryly. “Not when it comes to grammar, anyway!”

  “That’s why he sounds foreign, Uncle,” Ronald pointed out. “His speech is too perfect.”

  They gave their order to the waiter and ate some melba toast while they waited for the food to arrive.

  “You don’t keep kosher, I notice,” Ben said to Peter.

  “I hope I am not offending you by having roast beef? That you all ordered fish for that reason did not occur to me. At home we ate no differently from the Gentiles,” Peter explained without embarrassment.

  Marianne recalled what Hannah had said after the Mosley meeting, about the German Jews being more assimilated than the English. Apparently it was the same in Austria. Peter’s home life didn’t seem to have been very Jewish. But his family had been reminded of what they were, in the end, by Hitler.

  “Nobody can blame you for doing what you were brought up to think was all right,” David said to Peter. “But I imagine you’ll be living in my brother’s house. He’s married to your cousin Miriam and they have a son who’s almost your age. And it’s a kosher household, like they all are in our family.”

  “Whoever gives me a home, they and their household I will respect, Mr. Sandberg,” Peter replied sincerely.

  “I’m sure you will,” David smiled. “And you’d better start calling me Uncle David.”

  Peter looked perplexed. “But you are not my uncle.”

  “The Sandbergs and Moritzes are one big clan, Peter. Though the only official relationship is our Sammy being Miriam’s husband. Sometimes friendship can be a tie as strong as blood,” David reflected. “As you’ll discover now you’re joining us.”

  Peter crumbled the toast on his side plate and stared down at the tablecloth, his face puckered with emotion. “Two weeks ago, I had a family,” he said slowly. “Since then, I have felt I had nobody at all. Maybe I will never see my parents and grandfather again. I am not a child. I must face it.”

  The lad’s got guts, David thought. And by God, he needed to have.

  “I did not want to leave them behind and come here alone,” Peter said, raising his head to look at David and Ben. “But I thank you and my Uncle Sigmund for allowing me into your family. Now, I do not feel alone anymore.”

  The waiter served the main course and Peter helped himself to a crusty roll.

  “Oy! Meat and milk he shouldn’t be mixing!” Ben exclaimed, watching him plaster the bread with butter. “Even though the meat isn’t kosher,” he added irrationally. “And on Friday night no less he’s doing it, when the Shabbos candles are lit everywhere.”

  “So, he won’t eat dairy foods at the same time as beef when he gets to Manchester,” David said tolerantly. He had found the boy’s words deeply moving and knew Ben had, too; and that Ben’s remonstration had just been a cover for this.

  Marianne watched David stub out the cigarette he had lit between courses, though smoking on Shabbos was forbidden. Sometimes she found the way her elders kept some of the laws and broke others confusing.

  Sigmund and Hildegard were still sleeping after dinner and David agreed with Ben that they should not set off for home until the following morning.

  The four youngsters elected to travel together.

  “I’ll let you have the pleasure of their company, Ben,” David said. He wanted to talk to Sigmund alone. “What are we going to do with Peter,” he asked his old friend thoughtfully when they had left Dover and were traversing an icy, country road.

  Sigmund emerged from the impassive silence he had maintained since he got into the car. “What do you mean, what are we going to do with him?”

  David had had second thoughts about the boy’s living at Sammy’s house. “I wouldn’t mind having him,” he said carefully.

  “Whose nephew is he? Yours or mine?” Sigmund flashed.

  “But with you, he’d have to share Martin’s room. And it’s only a small one.”

  To this Sigmund could say nothing. He was occupying the spare bedroom at Sammy and Miriam’s himself. The arrival of his twin grandsons had made it necessary for him to vacate the room he had occupied in his old home after leaving his wife.

  “You think Bessie would agree to it?” he asked uncertainly.

  “My wife’s got a lot of faults,” David answered. “But being hard-hearted with children isn’t one of them.”

  “If all of them had come, I was going to ask your mother to have them in her big house, until they got their own place,” Sigmund said sounding choked. “My brother wrote me Rudy was a clever man. It wouldn’t have taken him long to find work and provide for them.”

  “But when a boy comes by himself, it’s different, isn’t it? We have to make certain he’ll feel part of something and not like a lost sheep.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sigmund exclaimed edgily. “He’ll be part of the family.”

  “But we don’t all live together, do we?” David pointed out. “And we must make sure Peter lives where it’s right for him. You’ve seen how he already gets on with my Ronald.”

  “Why do we have to decide now?” Sigmund said. He felt drained, emotionally and physically and he did not want to make a quick decision he might afterwards regret, as had been the case with his marriage to Gertie Fish.

  “For Peter’s sake,” David replied. “We’re not going to shift him from one place to another, like a stray parcel. The uprooting he’s had is enough. Wherever he sleeps tonight he should know will be his home.”

  Sigmund lapsed into a silence that lasted for most of the journey and David knew better than to press him for an immediate answer. When they stopped the cars to buy petrol and the children got out to stretch their legs, David saw him watching Peter and Ronald talking together and noted his thoughtful expression.

  Marianne and Hildegard were strolling up and down the forecourt, ankle-deep in snow.

  “I pity that kid, having to live with Paula Frankl,” Ben said to David whilst they waited for their change.

  “Hugo will take her,” David replied. “She’ll be company for his daughter, Eva, he said when I phoned him from Dover.”

  Ben snorted. “A nice reason!”

  “I’m sure it isn’t the only one.” David lit a cigarette and watched the smoke mingle with his breath in the frigid air. “I’ve asked Sigmund to let me have Peter.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I’m not going to start examining my motives, in case you think I should. I know I want him and that’s enough.”

  “It’s the only reason that counts.”

  Sigmund did not return to the subject until they were nearing home and even then he did so indirectly. “You made a better job of Ronald than Sammy did with Martin,” he opined.

  David felt his hands tense on the steering wheel. Was Sigmund denigrating his brother? Or stating a fact based on something he knew that David didn’t?

  “I know what you’re thinking, I can read you like a book,”
Sigmund said. “Listen, nobody loves Sammy better than me. A heart of gold he’s got. And he’s made my daughter Miriam happier than you would have done, though with you she would have been richer in the things that don’t make happiness.”

  Sigmund had not passed judgement when David broke his engagement to Miriam. Nor had he referred to it since. Hearing him do so many years later was a shock, but what he had said was true, in every respect. “You seem to know me better than I do myself,” David said wryly.

  “As well as you know yourself. It was knowing yourself that stopped you from marrying Miriam.”

  “It was knowing her, too.”

  “That I’m prepared to admit. But I don’t want to discuss what is over and done with. We were talking about Sammy.”

  “And the bad job he’s made of raising his son, according to you!” David said hotly. “Personally, I think Martin is a fine boy.”

  “Would I think otherwise about my own grandson?” Sigmund gazed pensively out of the window at the slushy pavement on Cheetham Hill Road as they sped along. “But there are things about him that worry me. And the way he writes poetry about death is the main one.”

  “Those rhymes he used to make up when he was younger weren’t like that.”

  “So, something’s happened to change him, hasn’t it? To make him morbid. And whatever it is, why has his father let it happen?”

  “He’s got a mother, too,” David said in defence of Sammy. “And the way Miriam’s always fussed over Martin could have something to do with it,” he added. “She lives in fear of something happening to him.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Sigmund sighed. “But all the same, Sammy shouldn’t have let her be like she is with Martin. A strong father can make up for a weak mother. Though Miriam isn’t weak in other ways.”

  The only occasion on which David had seen Sammy be firm with his wife about their son was during the family row about taking the children to hear Mosley speak. But by then it was probably too late, the damage had been done.

  “Hannah told me about those morbid poems,” Sigmund said. “She is worried also.”

  “So why doesn’t she mention it to his parents?”

  “And break the boy’s confidence? She’s the only one except Marianne he trusts enough to show them to. But me she could talk to about it. I’m only the old grandfather.”

  They were approaching the brightly-lit Riviera Cinema and would soon be at Sarah’s house, where the family were gathered at the tea party.

  “Don’t worry, Martin will grow out of it,” David said stamping out his disquiet. “But you haven’t given me an answer about Peter.”

  “He’ll live with you. But not because I’m letting you tell me what to do, like everyone else lets you,” Sigmund declared. “Because I’ve made up my mind it’s right.”

  Thus, Peter Kohn’s future was decided, on a bleak December night in 1938 while David was turning his car into Heywood Street and he knew he would always remember that moment. He had just acquired a foster son. And Ronald would have the brother he wanted.

  The children were standing beside Ben’s car when David pulled up behind it. He told Peter and Ronald immediately and the delight of both was plain to see.

  “Never did I see so many people in a room this size,” Peter said when they entered Sarah’s parlour and he was introduced to the family.

  “From now on you’ll be seeing it every Shabbos,” Ronald informed him.

  David had ushered Bessie into the lobby for a private word.

  “What kind of woman would I be, if I couldn’t give a home to a boy in his position?” she said when he explained. “But he’s Miriam’s cousin, not ours,” she added. “Won’t she want him?”

  “Our house is much bigger than hers,” David replied. It was a reason with which nobody could argue and the one he gave Miriam and Sammy.

  Hugo Frankl was in the parlour with his daughter.

  “All afternoon they’ve been here waiting for Hildegard,” Sarah said.

  Hugo dabbed his eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief and returned it to his breast pocket. “I can’t believe she’s really here,” he said emotionally. “When they weren’t on the boat I went to meet, I thought all my relatives in Vienna were dead.”

  Hildegard and Peter exchanged a tortured glance, and everyone fell silent.

  “I think they would be better off dead than where they are now,” Peter said quietly. “And my people also.”

  Hildegard shuddered. “They took them all away a fortnight ago.”

  Peter was struggling to contain his feelings and it was Ronald, who had learned the rest of the story when they shared a bedroom in the hotel, who told it to the family.

  “They all lived in the same block of flats, you see. And it happened on a night when Peter and Hildegard were visiting a Christian friend who lived there too. This girl’s parents hid them both in a big cupboard when they heard all the commotion and saw the vehicles parked outside in the street. They didn’t let them out until the Nazis had gone and when Peter and Hildegard went home, their front doors were wide open and there was nobody there.”

  Sarah’s flesh had prickled with horror as she listened. The implications were worse than the details Ronald had supplied, and she wanted to weep for the boy and girl whom Fate had deprived of their loved ones and destined would now be here in her parlour. It had to be Fate, she thought, fingering her brooch, because God was merciful, not cruel.

  “Peter found the boat tickets in his father’s desk,” Ronald went on. “The Nazis had taken his mother’s jewellery and furs and all the silver, but they hadn’t looked in there.”

  “But how did Peter and Hildegard get to France, to get on the boat?” Arnold Klein asked. “Weren’t you frightened of being caught?” he said to Peter.

  “I realized I had not known the meaning of fear until recently,” Peter replied finding his tongue. “We travelled with a party of Christian schoolchildren who were going to Paris to visit the art galleries and my heart was thudding like a hammer, all the way. The father of our friend, in whose apartment we were that night, was the teacher who was escorting the group.”

  “Such a wonderful man, I shall never forget him,” Hildegard said with tears in her eyes. “He arranged for a boy and girl of our age to remain behind and pretended Peter and I were them. Somehow he managed for us to have their papers, to show when we crossed the border. He bought us railway tickets from Paris to Calais and put us on the train with a bag of food to eat.”

  “And before we left Vienna, he hid us in a cellar until it was time to go,” Peter added. “We did not return to our own homes again after that night. That is why we have no baggage. To return for our clothing would not have been safe.”

  “But I have a nice blue dress, which was his daughter’s who was my best friend,” Hildegard said, displaying the paper parcel she was still clutching. “And now Marianne is my first English friend.”

  Hugo Frankl dabbed his eyes again and kissed her cheek. “You won’t be short of dresses now you’re with me, love. And Marianne will come and visit you.”

  “I’ll ring you up, Marianne,” his daughter Eva said as her father bore her and Hildegard away.

  Bessie put a kindly arm around Peter’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’ve arrived in time for our Ronald’s Bar Mitzvah. We’ll get Peter a nice new suit for it,” she said to David.

  “I’ll make him one, like I’m making Ronald’s,” Sigmund told her.

  “Will you have time to? You still haven’t finished David’s new evening suit.”

  “Dad won’t need one,” Ronald declared adamantly. “Because I’m not having that kind of Bar Mitzvah and nobody’s going to make me.”

  David and Bessie looked taken aback.

  “I won’t have all that money spent on a lot of people who aren’t short of food,” their son informed them. He appealed to Nathan who was listening with evident approval. “You agree, don’t you, Uncle Nat? I want Dad to give the money he was going to spend on
a big reception to a Refugee Fund, instead.”

  Our Nat is Ronald’s mentor and ally, like Sigmund was mine when I was a lad, David thought with a pang. But maybe every boy needed someone other than his father to turn to.

  Nathan was sitting with Leona on his lap, turning over the pages of a picture book for her. “You’ve made it clear to your dad how you feel, Ronald,” he said carefully, aware of David watching him. “And you’ve told him why. What matters now is what he thinks. It’s his money, not mine.”

  “But I bet if you were my dad, you wouldn’t need telling what was the right thing to do!” Ronald burst out.

  “That’s enough,” Sarah intervened. The bad blood between David and Nat could be stirred up again because of this.

  David felt as if he had been dealt a physical blow. He had always thought his relationship with his son an ideal one, but Ronald’s behaviour indicated otherwise. He was conscious of Ronald’s gaze fixed on his face and of an air of waiting in the room. Peter seemed transfixed with embarrassment and scenes like this must be avoided in future for his sake.

  “All right, Ronald. We’ll just have a luncheon at home for the family and your friends, after shul,” he said.

  “And you will give the money to help refugees?”

  David nodded. “But not because I’m letting you tell me what to do,” he added borrowing the words Sigmund had said to him about Peter. “Because I think it’s right.”

  Ronald’s face was wreathed in smiles, but Bessie’s was the picture of dejection.

  “What’s up, Mam?” Shirley asked her.

  “Your father’s just taken away my excuse for a new evening gown.”

  Bessie’s reply made everyone laugh and lightened the atmosphere.

  “So, you’ll have a new costume instead,” Esther consoled her.

  “I’d have had one for shul anyway.” Bessie glanced at Peter, whose presence among them had temporarily changed her priorities. “But what does it matter?”

  “It doesn’t,” Sarah declared. “The important thing is that we’re all here together, safe and well. And we shouldn’t underestimate our good fortune that we live in England.”