by Maisie Mosco
“But not you.”
“I’m on top of the world when I’m with her.”
“It won’t last, Arnold.”
“Why shouldn’t it?”
“Because sooner or later, when the novelty wears off like it does in even the best of marriages, you’ll wake up one morning and realize it wasn’t worth it.”
“Worth what?”
“The anguish you marrying-out will put your parents through. And not just them, the whole family.”
“Now we’re coming to it, aren’t we?” Arnold said sharply. “It’s not me and my happiness anyone round here cares about! I can stay single and be lonely all my life or marry a Jewish girl I don’t love and live in misery, like Uncle Nat, so long as I don’t disgrace the family!”
“What makes you think Uncle Nat’s marriage isn’t a happy one?” David said, avoiding his eye.
“I’m not blind. Or deaf. And I think it’s a damn shame he was forced to give up his Christian girl-friend.”
Was there nothing the younger end of the family didn’t know about their elders? David wondered.
“Fortunately for me, I’m made of stronger stuff,” his nephew declared.
And stubborn as a mule, David added mentally. The boy was the image of Esther, but this was the first time he had revealed he also had her fighting spirit. Arnold had always been quiet and self-contained, so you never knew what he was thinking. Not the kind who made his presence felt, like Ronald did! He had gone away a gangling lad, but the Navy had turned him into a man to be reckoned with. Or was it the girl?
“Uncle Nat’s met Lyn and he likes her,” Arnold conveyed as if he had read David’s final thought. “I took her to Scotland to meet him, last week.”
“I see.”
“Well he’s more broadminded than the rest of the clan, isn’t he?”
“So it seems.”
“And I’ve always been able to talk to him. So has Ronald.”
David permitted himself a sour smile. But Nat’s influence over his son was another story.
“Where is Ronald, by the way? I was hoping he’d be here to back me up.” Arnold surveyed his uncle’s expression and noted the flicker of alarm. “I didn’t mean that Ronald’s got a Christian girl. He doesn’t want to tie himself up to anyone until he qualifies.”
“Thank you for telling me,” David said shortly. Why did he always have to learn of his son’s private plans second-hand?
“But I shouldn’t think he’s the kind to marry-out,” Arnold went on. “He’s too involved in Zionism.”
“And other Jewish affairs,” David added, thankful that this was so. “He’s with some fellow-students this afternoon, as a matter of fact. They’re up in arms about the Government not letting in enough refugees.”
“It’s hardly relevant at the moment, is it?” Arnold said coolly.
“It will be when those who manage to live through it are released from the concentration camps,” David retorted. “But I didn’t bring you in here for a political debate.”
“No. The digression was due to me asking where Ronald was and there’d have to be a good excuse for him to be granted a special dispensation to miss the Shabbos tea party,” Arnold said dryly.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Never mind.”
“But I do mind,” David flashed.
Arnold eyed him for a moment. “The way you look now is how I always think of you, Uncle. Filling me with guilt and trepidation, even when I’ve done nothing wrong. Did you know you have that effect on people?”
David was too shaken to reply. He had seen himself as a benevolent father-figure, there to aid and advise, and now he was being told he was looked upon as an ogre.
“But it doesn’t matter anymore,” Arnold informed him. “Well, not to me, anyway.”
“I’m concerned with your relationship with this girl, not with the way you feel about me,” David said curtly.
Arnold’s lips tightened. “I’d be obliged if you’d refer to her by her name. Though you obviously consider her an anonymous fly in the family ointment.”
“How else can I think of her?”
“And that’s what I’m up against, isn’t it? Did you ever meet Uncle Nat’s girl-friend?”
“Yes.” Why was he letting Arnold interrogate him?
“But it made no difference, did it, Uncle?”
The mental snapshot of a pretty young girl David had carried away with him, after finding Nathan in Whitworth Park with her, returned to his memory. He had only encountered her once again and she’d been an acid-voiced woman with wary eyes, whom his ruthless interference had probably helped to make that way. But David hadn’t considered her side of it. Only what she represented.
“That’s why I didn’t bring Lyn home,” Arnold said. “It would do no good, so why put her through it? I don’t want you to think it was because I didn’t have the guts.”
David would never think that about this nephew again. He’d learned more about Arnold in the last half hour than he had in all the lad’s twenty-two years. And a thing or two about himself, as well.
“Uncle Nat came to have a meal at the pub Lyn and I stayed at, and he and I had a private chat after Lyn had gone to bed. That was when he told me about Mary. I think he only let me in on his past to stop me from marrying-out. He said he can think of Mary dispassionately now and it’s taught him there’s nothing you can’t get over if you try,” Arnold revealed.
“Then why don’t you learn from his experience?”
“Because I’m not Uncle Nat. The difference between him and me is I don’t want to get over it. I see no reason why I should.”
David looked at him coldly. “You don’t see the family as a reason?”
He watched Arnold walk to the hearth, which his grandmother had filled with laurel leaves from the garden, as she always did in summer, and finger the brass menorah Sarah had brought with her from Russia, that had stood on the mantelpiece since before Arnold was born. What was he thinking? Was he moved by the familiar sight? By the home life and heritage it epitomized?
His nephew’s face when he turned around showed that he was. But his tone belied it. “The family doesn’t own me, Uncle David. I made up my mind not to let it, because of what it had become to me. Something to fear, as well as to love, if you want the truth.” Arnold smiled bitterly. “A two-headed giant ruling my life. The love’s still there, it always will be, but I’ve stamped the fear out. It was the only way to belong to myself.”
The telephone had shrilled in the kitchen a few minutes ago, but David had barely been aware of it, or that the ringing had stopped. Then a piercing scream sent him running, with Arnold at his heels. They found Miriam leaning on the wall, ashen-faced.
“Oh God,” she whispered when David reached her and fell against him. “God help me.”
David could hear sounds coming from the receiver, which was dangling on its cord beside her. He had never been so terror-stricken in his life but made himself grab hold of it and put it to his ear. “Who’s there? What is it?”
“I – can’t talk –” he heard Sammy’s voice croak piteously. Had Sammy had some kind of seizure? The receiver clicked down at the other end and he could not ask. “Is something wrong with Sammy?” he said to Miriam urgently.
Miriam shook her head.
David froze. It had to be Martin.
The rest of the family had rushed in from the parlour, demanding to know what had happened and David could not make himself heard above the din. “Be quiet!” he shouted.
What followed was like taking part in your own nightmare, he thought in a remote part of his mind. Miriam was no longer leaning against him. She had jerked away and was looking up at him as if surprised to see it was he who had been supporting her. Then she began beating his chest with her clenched fists, as though she blamed him for the agony tearing her apart, letting it rip out of her like a tortured animal and the sound filled the room until his mother slapped her face and put a
n end to it.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” she said in a brittle voice. “But you see I haven’t got a son anymore.”
David saw Esther and Ben, still bowed down by their own trouble, sag beneath the weight of this greater one.
Hannah and Carl caught Sigmund by the arms in time to lower him into a chair as his knees buckled. Helga went to comfort Miriam. Bessie and Rebecca stood huddled close together, their faces shadowed with distress, and Abraham glanced up at the ceiling, then slouched into the scullery; he had always been the kind who had to lick his wounds alone.
David’s mind was recording these unimportant details, detachedly. Why was he letting them clutter a moment of tragedy? he thought, noting Arnold biting his lip and catching sight of his own bleak expression in the mirror above the dresser. But wasn’t it always the surrounding trivia that lived on in a person’s memory when heartache lost its edge? He could still recall Miriam wearing a little green and white hat and the water gushing down from it when they ended their affair – in a rainstorm. But he couldn’t reproduce the way he’d felt when he walked away from her. You couldn’t keep the moment alive.
His mother’s hand had fluttered to her brooch, but apart from that she had not moved.
“Get Miriam a drop of brandy,” she said to him.
“I don’t want any brandy. And if I did I wouldn’t let him get it for me.”
Why had she chosen now to behave this way with him, after showing no animosity all these years?
“All I want is my son. But I might as well cry for the moon.”
“He was my grandson, too,” Sigmund said pitifully.
“You’ve got two others and Ma’s still got three.”
“But who’s counting?” Arnold quipped brutally.
“Keep your mouth shut!” his father flung at him. “You’ve caused enough tsorus in the family today.”
“In that case I’d better leave before I cause any more,” Arnold replied. “I can’t help my sense of humour.”
Ben gave him a withering glance. “Is that what you call it?”
Arnold’s lips twisted into a smile that was more like a grimace. “If you were spending your life in the midst of death – forgive the pun, there I go again! – like Martin did and like I still am, your sense of humour might’ve got a bit warped, too.” He went to Miriam and kissed her. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Auntie.”
“It’s all right, Arnold. I understand.” Miriam stared pensively into space. “I just wish I’d understood Martin better. Perhaps I didn’t try to.”
“Who can understand their own children?” Ben declaimed, glaring at Arnold. “Why they do the things they do. Why they want to do them. What does it matter who gets hurt? What do they care about the cost?”
“Even if it turns out to be their own life,” Miriam whispered.
“What are they trying to prove and who to?” Ben continued the dialogue which, on his side, was recriminatory.
But Miriam’s voice held only regret. “And my son didn’t even die gloriously, the way he wanted to,” she revealed. “I’d felt for a long time that Martin wanted to die. But he didn’t go to his Maker in a winged chariot, fighting for the cause. Did I tell you that, yet?” she added vaguely. “I can’t remember.” A tremor rippled through her. “He roared to Heaven on a motor-bike. Killed in a motor-cycle accident, Sammy told me the telegram said. I didn’t know Martin could ride one.”
“You ought to go home, Miriam,” David said gently.
“But you’re not taking me,” she retorted.
“I will,” Arnold offered. “If someone will lend me a car.”
David hid his embarrassment. “Take mine, the keys are on the hall table. The rest of us will come later. You can leave me to make the necessary arrangements,” he said to Miriam.
“Sammy and I leave our son’s funeral arrangements to you?”
David felt as if a whiplash had stung his cheek.
“That’s one thing you won’t have the satisfaction of doing for us,” Miriam declared stinging the other one.
“Nobody’s more broken-hearted for you than I am, but I can’t have you talking to David that way,” Bessie told her indignantly.
“If he didn’t make it necessary, I wouldn’t have to.”
Sarah was relieved when Abraham came in from the scullery and diverted their attention. There was no knowing what Miriam might come out with in her present mood.
“A fine friend you’ve turned out to be,” she heard her husband tell the ceiling reproachfully.
“That’s no way to talk to God,” she rebuked him.
Abraham was still gazing upwards. “All right, so I apologize. But maybe we could make a bargain, You and me. I’ll stop blaming You for taking Martin, if You’ll stop our Arnold from marrying a shiksah.”
“There’s nobody up there to hear you, Pa,” Miriam said wearily. “I began to doubt it when I saw how my mother suffered with that long illness and now I’m certain.”
“So why did you talk about your son going to his Maker?” Sarah demanded.
“It’s hard to get out of a lifetime’s habits. But from now on, to me He’s just a figure of speech.” Miriam’s lower lip trembled, and she turned her luminous eyes on Esther and Ben. “And there’s something I’d like to say to you two. If I could get Martin back, I wouldn’t give a damn who he married, so long as he was alive and happy.”
“It’s all right for you to say that now!” Esther exclaimed passionately. Then she gazed at her own son, who was standing stiffly in the doorway and her voice grew cold and matter of fact. “I want to say something, too. While everyone’s present to hear it. If Arnold marries that shiksah, to me he’ll be just as dead as poor Martin is. I’ll have one son instead of two. He’ll never set foot in his parents’ home again.”
A chill of foreboding raised the gooseflesh on Sarah’s arms. Why was Esther tempting Fate who rarely let you get away with it? Pushing Arnold to the point of no return? She saw him swallow hard before spoke.
“I’ll take Auntie Miriam home, then I’ll push off.” He glanced briefly at his father, but Ben’s expression was for once implacable and he said nothing. “Goodbye, Mother.”
He hustled Miriam out of the room and it was not until they heard the front door slam shut that the family emerged from their shock.
“You know what I’m thinking?” Esther said, staring through the window into the back garden, where Frank was trying to stop Henry from pulling Leona’s hair. “When Arnold was still my son, he used to call me Mam. Today was the first time he ever called me Mother.”
Ben leapt up from his chair. “She’s casting him out before the event! He hasn’t even done it yet!”
“But he will,” Esther answered tonelessly. “You don’t know him like I do, you said so yourself. He’s like me, he means what he says. When your Joe married-out, you said you’d never forgive him, but you have. Even though you hardly ever see him.”
“He’s my brother.”
“But you didn’t bring him up, work your fingers to the bone for him, like you did for your son. A lot of thanks you’ve got for it! Arnold’s throwing everything you taught him back in your face and mine, too. As if we just plucked him off a tree we happened to be passing, as though he doesn’t belong to us.”
What a dangerous thing our possessiveness is, David thought, recalling that this had been the aspect of Jewish family life Arnold resented most, and the one that had finally pushed him over the edge. His own generation had not dared to question it. Nathan, thirteen years younger, had dared, but hadn’t had the nerve to carry it further. Today, it seemed the youngsters lacked neither daring nor nerve, though they still found it painful to defy the family. He did not allow his mind to dwell on what the next decade might bring. The young Jews and Jewesses of the 1950s would probably go their own way without experiencing a twinge.
He saw his mother pick up a photograph of Arnold and Martin in the Manchester Grammar School caps they had worn as boys. If Arnold married Lyn,
would she, like Esther, behave in the ritual way of her forefathers, as if he, too, were dead?
“No matter what he does, I’ll still love him,” he heard her declare firmly.
“What has loving got to do with it?” Esther demanded. “It’s a question of duty, isn’t it?”
Sarah gave her an imperious look. “For me with my family, you can’t have one without the other. And bridges I haven’t yet come to, I don’t try to cross.” She replaced the photograph on the mantelpiece with the rest of the family gallery. “Why are we wasting time talking about what hasn’t yet happened, when Miriam and Sammy need us?”
She picked up the telephone receiver. “I’ll ring up for a taxi. There won’t be room for all of us in Ben’s car.”
How competent and resourceful she was, David reflected whilst she made the call. Not many ageing grandmothers would present the calm exterior Sarah Sandberg did after receiving two such terrible blows, one after the other. But she was blessed with an inner strength few possessed. And without putting it into words, had indicated that she would not cut Arnold off.
Had she mellowed with the years? Or moved with the times? More so than her daughter? Tolerance had never been his mother’s way with her children. But she was a wise woman. And a wily old bird! Maybe she had realized that with her grandchildren it might have to be.
Chapter 12
Another envelope bearing Martin’s handwriting was waiting for Marianne when she returned from a day out in Salisbury. Beside it on her bed, was a typed note requesting her presence at the Platoon Office.
She had not heard from him since he called at her quarters in her absence two weeks ago. Why hadn’t he let her know he was coming? But he hadn’t the last time, either. It wasn’t like Martin to do things on an impulse, but he had changed in more ways than that.
Birdie came into the room from the shower, swathed in a towel. “’E came on a motor-bike this time,” she said, eyeing the envelope. “Said ’e’d borrowed it from the flight mechanic. You’n ’im’s like a couple o’ ships what keeps passin’ each other in the night, if yer asks me!”
Marianne read the note, which was just two lines of his verse transformed into a quizzical sentence: “When shall we twain join hands again?” With the “shall” underlined.