Scattered Seed

by Maisie Mosco

  “Obviously not. Did I know where you live when I offered?”

  “I thought so.”

  “I couldn’t have done. I’m expected at a wedding in Manchester.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I got married on a Monday, too.”

  Martin sat up. “Isn’t today Saturday?”

  “No, sweetie. It’s Sunday.”

  He groaned and lay down again.

  The girl put a cool hand on his fevered brow. “We’ve been shacked up here since Friday night.”

  “The wedding’s at 3.30 this afternoon,” Martin said weakly.

  “You couldn’t possibly get there in time, pet.”

  Martin thought he might just manage to if he left immediately but could not summon the strength to argue with her.

  “Not in the state you’re in,” she smiled. “You wanted to stagger out of here yesterday, put me on a train and go wherever you were going, which you didn’t seem clear about. But I persuaded you to stay,” she added coyly leaving him in no doubt as to the kind of persuasion she had used. “And you drank the rest of the whisky instead of eating your breakfast.”

  A rap on the door heralded the arrival of two plates of sausage and scrambled dried-egg, swimming in grease as Martin had anticipated.

  The angular, pinch-nosed landlady clanked the tin tray on to the dressing table. “I usually put it on the bedtable, so my guests won’t be inconvenienced,” she said giving the whisky bottle a censorious glance. “But it’s otherwise occupied.”

  “You said that yesterday morning,” the girl replied haughtily, and Martin got the impression she always addressed those whom she considered servants that way.

  “And I’ll say it again tomorrow,” the woman retorted. “If you and your bottle are still here,” she added before departing.

  Martin rubbed the two-day stubble on his chin and watched his companion leap out of bed alive with energy, pondering on the opposite effects sexual activity had upon male and female, leaving a man completely drained, but a woman revitalized and, as his crew skipper had once put it, rarin’ to go.

  The girl had a dimpled bottom, he noted, and long, graceful legs, but he had no recollection of what she looked like clothed. She was standing by the dressing table gobbling her breakfast ravenously and ate Martin’s, too, when he said he did not want it. Afterwards, she poured the tea and brought him a cup, lighting a cigarette from a squashed packet of Players Navycut she fished from under her pillow, before getting in bed beside him to sip hers.

  “Want a puff of my ciggie? It’s the last one left.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “That’s right, you don’t.” She put down her cup and saucer and slipped a hand under the bedclothes.

  Rarin’ to go was right! Martin knew where her insidious fingers would settle before he felt them there. The whole thing was just a mechanical exercise, he thought with disgust rising in him again. But this did not prevent his penis from rising, too. Once, he had viewed lovemaking romantically, but there was no vestige of tenderness in the gyrations he performed with his popsies. Just animal sensation and afterwards nothing but emptiness.

  Would it be like that for Peter when he made love to Shirley tonight? Or was there another dimension to it when you knew and respected each other, and the girl was giving herself to you because she was your wife? He thought of his father’s devotion to his mother and knew that there had to be.

  The girl had thrown back the covers and was gazing at his erection. “I never saw one like yours before,” she remarked running a finger around the drawn-back foreskin. “Why is it different from other blokes’, sweetie?”

  “I was circumcised. I’m Jewish.”

  The change in her expression was a mere flicker. “Oh really? Some of my pater’s best friends are Jewish.”

  Martin prickled. Anti-Semitism in bed! A Yiddisher boy never knew where he’d encounter it next. And the ones who shot you the best-friends line were always the worst.

  “Daddy’s in banking, you see,” she added as if that explained his socializing with the chosen people. “But I never thought I’d ever do it with a Jew. I mean you don’t look it, sweetie.”

  “If that’s intended to be a compliment, it isn’t one.” Martin reached for his drawers which were hanging on the bedpost and pulled them on.

  “Oh dear, I’ve offended you,” the girl pouted. “But I didn’t mean to.”

  They never did.

  She leaned over the side of the bed and took a silver powder compact from her handbag which she had dumped on the floor. “Honest injun, pet,” she said studying her reflection in the compact mirror.

  When she snapped the compact shut, Martin saw the name Penelope engraved upon it. So that was who he’d frittered away two precious nights and a day of his life with. A girl with an upper crust name that went with her attitudes. Who possibly didn’t know she was an anti-Semite but was one. He had put on his socks as well as his drawers, but the rest of his clothing was lying in a heap by the window and he got out of bed to finish dressing.

  “Why are you people so touchy?” she inquired.

  Because people like you have made us that way, he answered mentally.

  The girl eyed him sulkily and he noted a few lines on her face which had escaped his attention until now. She was older than he’d taken her for and there was a hardness about her that made him think she could be bitchy when crossed.

  “Hand me my undies, will you?” she rasped proving it.

  Had she really expected him to make love to her after that nauseous conversation? But it hadn’t been sickening for her, only for him. And his libido had been affected accordingly. He gathered up the scraps of satin and lace lying on the threadbare rug at her side of the bed and tossed them to her, then went downstairs to pay the bill.

  The girl appeared at the head of the stairs while he was waiting for the landlady to do her mental arithmetic, clad in Land Army uniform, her nipples pressing like marbles against her tight, green pullover. Under other circumstances, Martin would have paused to admire them, but he turned away and handed the landlady the money for which she had just asked. His companion had apparently consumed dinner and tea whilst he snored the hours away, which had raised the bill from a guinea to £2 10s.

  His attention was diverted by the empty whisky bottle hurtling down the stairs and several choice epithets with it. The final one was “bloody Jew-boy”, erasing any doubts he might have afterwards had about being over-sensitive, and was still ringing in his ears when he picked his way over the broken glass and made his exit.

  When he reached the doorstep, he realized he had no idea where he had left the car he’d borrowed from the rear-gunner. He would have to ask the girl to fill in another blank for him. He retraced his footsteps down the long, narrow lobby that looked as if its dingy brown paint had not been freshened since before the war, past the empty umbrella stand and a desolate potted palm that seemed to be crying out for water. Or maybe it just felt queasy from the stale cooking smells? He would have had to be blind drunk to stay in such a place.

  The landlady was sweeping up the evidence of the girl’s wrath. “Can’t remember where you’re parked, I suppose? And no wonder! You were paralytic when she brought you in here, without swigging another lot on top of it.”

  Martin felt something metallic hit his cheek.

  “I did the driving and it’ll do you good to have to go and look for your broken-down jalopy!” the girl called nastily from upstairs. “Who the hell do you think you are, walking out on me? I wish I’d taken your eye out when I threw you the blasted keys!”

  Martin retrieved them from the floor and escaped into the clear morning air. That Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned must have been penned in the light of experience. What a bizarre episode this whole thing was. But perhaps not the wasted time it seemed. What was it that Uncle David had once said about his experiences in the last war? Which wouldn’t have included bedding popsies! There
was no such thing as wasted time, he’d said. Because everything a person did was part of living.

  He found the ancient Austin Seven in a side street near the bus station and slid the tattered hood back. He’d been cooped up for long enough. The yellow Hants & Dorset buses had a cheerful look about them and the people strolling by did, too. Elderly couples attired in their Sunday best, on their way to church carrying prayer books. And young women with children, heading in the same direction, some with a soldier or an airman on leave, by their sides. The scene had the same decorous ambience present when Jewish families walked to shul, Martin thought. Only the places of worship were different.

  He spotted Penelope’s jodhpured bottom undulating past the White Hart Hotel as he drove by and could not resist the temptation to honk his horn as a final gesture of derision before heading out of the town. Then a signpost marked Salisbury caught his attention and he stopped the car. Marianne was stationed between Andover and Salisbury.

  A handy telephone kiosk clinched his decision to ring up and tell the family a cock-and-bull story and drive off in the opposite direction to home. Marianne mattered more to him than anyone; more than his parents, even, he thought whilst he waited for the telephone operator to put through the call. Or how could he be hardening his heart with the sound of his mother’s bitter disappointment in his ear? he asked himself listening to it a few moments later.

  The chance to be with the cousin whom he sometimes thought of as his twin-soul came but rarely these days. She irritated him madly, as he did her, he reflected wryly on his way to wash and shave in the railway station men’s room before visiting her. But we’re honest with each other, that’s why we’re so critical, he mused whilst lathering his stubbly chin. Honest and caring. There had always been something special between them.

  Driving through the Wiltshire countryside, past old thatched cottages and trees lacy with the first fragile May blossom, was a pleasure in itself. But he couldn’t wait to see Marianne. He hadn’t been this happy since he was a kid who still believed there was a Heaven with God seated on a golden throne watching over Mankind. It’s a beautiful, wonderful day! a joyful voice sang within his breast as he waited for a farmer to prod a herd of cattle into a daisy-strewn meadow and let him pass. But what had brought this sudden metamorphosis about, dressing everything he looked upon in rainbow shades of brilliance, instead of all-pervading grey?

  He was halfway up the hill that led to Marianne’s quarters. with the car engine chugging like a slow train, when the answer struck him with an impact so strong he had to pull up and rest his head on the steering wheel.

  “Hey, bud!” a Yankee twang hollered nasally from the line of trucks and jeeps that had halted behind him, unable to pass because others were speeding downhill. “It’s okay for youse Limeys, but us guys don’t got all day!”

  The protest was followed by a chorus of blaring horns, but even this was not sufficient to bring Martin down from the clouds. He turned around and gave the irate GIs a beatific smile. Then he started the engine and coaxed the little Austin up the hill to where he would find his love.

  Chapter 9

  “Hand me my fur, Nat,” Rebecca requested, settling a small pillbox hat aslant on her head and leaving him dangling the mink tie awkwardly by its tail until she had fiddled with her hair.

  Nathan watched her rise from the dressing table stool and smooth the skirt of her clingy crêpe suit over her hips. She was elegance personified, clad in her favourite muted brown. But who was the army officer reflected in the mirror with her? It was still hard to believe the real Nathan Sandberg was hidden behind that uniformed façade.

  Rebecca was checking her stocking seams and his gaze travelled along the two bold lines emphasizing her shapely calves before disappearing from view into the region of her anatomy he was no longer allowed to touch.

  “Who are you making yourself so fetching for?” he said sourly.

  She gave him an enigmatic look and went to spray some perfume behind her ears, as though she wanted to taunt him. “We’ll be late for the wedding if we don’t get a move on.” She picked up her handbag and gloves and went downstairs, leaving the muskiness of sandalwood behind her.

  Nathan glanced at the negligée she had left thrown carelessly on a chair, as he followed her out, then closed the door on the sensual recollections the froth of chiffon and the familiar scent had evoked. And on the twin divans his wife had substituted for their marital bed to let him know his connubial pleasures were over.

  “I hope your daughter doesn’t do anything to disgrace us during the ceremony,” Rebecca said whilst they were getting into the car. “I’ve been worried about it ever since Shirley asked her to be a bridesmaid.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Nathan answered shortly.

  “With the twins standing beside her? She’s liable to pick a row with Henry while the rabbi’s preaching the marriage sermon.”

  The twins were to be pages, but Nathan could not envisage Leona causing trouble in a synagogue. He started the car, irritably. “What about?”

  “Since when does your daughter need a reason?”

  “She’s your daughter as well.”

  “But she’s a Sandberg through and through. From my family tree red hair doesn’t sprout.”

  Nathan tried to contain himself. His family was full of redheads, their colouring, rare among Jews, inherited from Abraham. But only Shirley and Leona displayed the temperament associated with it and he resented the inference that they were an ill-tempered lot. His wife wasn’t the epitome of sweetness and light herself, though the girl he’d married had seemed to be. Which just went to show! “You should’ve examined my pedigree more carefully,” he could not stop himself from remarking caustically.

  “And a few other things about you, too,” Rebecca retorted.

  Once, their arranged marriage had been a sensitive subject to her, but her skin had thickened in that respect with the years.

  “Matchmakers can’t be trusted to tell their clients everything,” she added with a barbed edge to her husky voice.

  “And we’re the proof of it,” Nathan answered. “But whoever knows what a person is really like? Until they live with them?” He forced his hands to relax their tense grip on the steering wheel and glanced surreptitiously at the svelte beauty by his side. Where had the tender young girl gone to, whose adoration had once seared his conscience because he could not return it? Was she still there, beneath the mature, sophisticated veneer? Yearning for the perfect love she’d hoped her marriage would be, and indeed thought it was until she learned otherwise?

  The traumas of their early relationship had emanated solely from him and might never have crystallized into an irreversible situation had Mary not been on duty on the occasion his memory had recorded for all time as “that night.” Since then, their differences had sprung from Rebecca, though when the nightmare aftermath of Leona’s birth was resolved he’d thought everything was all right.

  That this was not so had seeped through to him gradually. Initially, he had been too relieved to see the signs. Then he’d noticed that their lovemaking held no interest for Rebecca, that she was a cool and passive partner. When had he first realized she was performing a marital duty, experiencing no pleasure? When Leona was a year old and he could no longer fool himself that his wife’s indifference was post-natal exhaustion.

  The way she used their daughter as a pawn in a game, to score over him, became noticeable also. But Leona had quickly learned to play it, too, and was still doing so, with both of them. The name of the piece the child wielded was Parental Love and there was none more powerful on Nathan’s chequer board of life, where stalemate had been his every outcome.

  A limousine, strung with white ribbons, was turning into the synagogue gateway as they covered the last few yards up Bury Old Road.

  “A fine thing!” Rebecca exclaimed. “We’re going to arrive after the bride.”

  “She’ll be titivating in the ante-room for ages, so what does it matter
?”

  “Getting there late are bad manners.”

  “Sod manners!”

  “Lovely expressions you’re learning the army. And I bet that isn’t all. There must be plenty of shiksahs stationed with you to teach you other things,” Rebecca said cuttingly. “Not that you need teaching.”

  “I’m surprised you remember if I do or not.”

  Rebecca stared through the windscreen. “Some things engrave themselves on a person’s memory.” Revulsion was the only emotion sex aroused in her and it was written on her face now.

  Nathan was well aware of this. Her passivity had graduated to steeling herself when he embraced her and the last time he’d tried to, which was about two years ago, she had told him in plain words to keep away. But it hadn’t always been like that. Some kind of shame was at the root of it, nibbling away like a canker at her natural feelings. Why was he being so vague, when he knew the cause? His wife couldn’t look herself in the eye because she’d had sex with a man who loved someone else. Nor could she forgive him for bringing it about, though she had briefly tried to. Pride was the real canker.

  “I suppose that’s why you were in such a hurry to join up, because you couldn’t get what you want at home. But I don’t care,” she said in a voice that revealed she did.

  She still loved him, but he’d never thought otherwise. The belt of thorns she had braided for him to wear was also wound around herself. If he told her the truth, that he’d hoped a period of separation would result in a reconciliation, that he hadn’t touched another woman, though not for lack of opportunity, would she believe him?

  “I made up my mind a long time ago not to let myself care about anything you do,” she informed him whilst he was parking the car in an avenue off the main road.

  She had built another wall around her emotions, but this time it was a conscious decision, not something she couldn’t control as her rejection of her baby had been. It would be a waste of breath telling her anything.

  Rebecca linked her arm through his when they walked to the synagogue and Nathan watched her smiling and nodding to the guests thronging the entrance. As if she’s blooming with happiness because I’m home on leave! he thought bitterly. But he’d learned long ago that keeping up appearances mattered to her.