Scattered Seed

by Maisie Mosco

  Abraham sighed and took the electric kettle into the scullery to fill it. David had bought it for them, but it was rarely used. Sarah preferred to keep her old cast-iron one singing on the hob as she had done when electricity in the home was unheard of.

  In many ways, people had been happier then, Abraham reflected as he turned on the cold tap. In Strangeways there’d been no hot one, water for baths and laundry had been heated on the fire. Now, people could switch on an immersion heater and make their household bills bigger. The more things that came along to make life easier, the more worries you had keeping up with them.

  It was the same in the factory, where David had installed central heating and now had to employ a man to look after the boiler. Which ate up mountains of coke. The old-fashioned paraffin stoves Abraham had liked to warm his hands over had disappeared. And his children now had fancy electric stoves, with imitation coal that lit up when you plugged in, warming their living rooms instead of real fires. Sammy had written that his apartment had no fireplace, that all the blocks of flats in New York were centrally heated. Like a factory! Abraham thought with disgust.

  In his view, a home without a welcoming hearth was not a home. But you couldn’t halt the march of progress. More and more convenience was what everyone wanted. The simple life of old was looked back on with scorn. Modern gadgets left more time for pleasure, people believed. What pleasure? he asked himself. Was it the electric kettle that had set him thinking about this? Probably. But the feeling that the world wasn’t what it was before the war had been creeping up on him for some time.

  And what pleasure was right! Once, he’d enjoyed going to the pictures, but who wanted to see films about murder and adultery? Hollywood must be a different place nowadays from what it had been when Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford had made Abraham laugh and cry. And Malka Berkowitz’s second-cousin was one of the producers responsible for the change. What was the grandson of a Hassid rabbi doing making immoral films?

  “Where are you with the kettle already?” he heard Sarah call testily. Which meant Arnold had dropped the phone in her ear again.

  Sarah watched him plug the kettle into the wall socket above the built-in dresser. “There’s no such thing as undiluted joy, Abraham.”

  “News, she’s telling me.”

  “What I’ve always said about the bitter with the sweet is staring me in the face again. Marianne, thank God, we didn’t lose. But Arnold we can’t get back.”

  They sat in pensive silence waiting for the water to boil. Then Sarah got up to make the tea, brewing it with an egg-shaped, metal infuser in the two, large, comforting cups they used when they were alone. “Did you ever think you’d get used to tea with milk?” she asked, adding some and handing Abraham his. “Instead of with lemon?”

  “Plenty of things I didn’t think I’d ever get used to,” he declared. “And some of the new-fangled ones I never will. What America does today, England will do tomorrow, my son who’s gone to live among the Yanks said in his last letter. Self-service grocery stores they’ve got there, Sammy said. What did he call them?”

  “Supermarkets. You don’t have to wait for anyone to serve you, so you get your shopping done quicker.”

  Abraham snorted. “Like machines put on the buttons and sew the buttonholes in the factory now. Instead of a person doing it. And those Hoffman presses do the job men like me used to take a pride in. Everything has to be quick, quick, quick!”

  “You and those Hoffman presses!”

  “But hasn’t the human touch gone out of nearly everything? One day, these clever machines they keep inventing, and the groceries like Sammy mentioned, that don’t need assistants behind the counter, will put everyone out of work.” Abraham was trembling with wrath and had to put down his cup. A bout of coughing overtook him and left him limp and exhausted. “But why should I care? I won’t be here when it happens,” he said, replacing his handkerchief in his pocket. “And the simple things of life my great-grandchildren have never known they won’t miss. A switch they’ll flick, and everything will happen by magic. So they can sit twiddling their thumbs, with nothing to do with their time.”

  Sarah eyed him anxiously. Giving vent to his feelings with such loquacity was not like him. The day trip to London had been long and wearisome, despite the comfort of David’s car, and Abraham had dozed off on the return journey. At the Brith, he’d had the honour of holding the baby’s legs during the ceremony, as he had for all his grandsons and great-grandsons. Except Arnold’s Matthew, Sarah thought with a pang. Matthew, they’d learned from Nat, had been circumcised by a surgeon, without any prayers being said. No mohel would circumcise a boy whose mother was not Jewish, but Arnold had arranged the next best thing.

  “Sammy and Miriam will be so happy there’s now a name for their Martin,” Abraham reflected with a poignant smile.

  Sarah was thinking of this, too. But as she and Abraham had grown older, she had noticed that their thoughts often coincided. Perhaps it was because they’d lived together for so long that the inseparable quality that had always been the cornerstone of their marriage was, in their old age, making their two minds sometimes seem like one.

  “Isn’t that why Jews call the newly born after their departed loved ones?” she said softly. “What could be better than a living memory? Until David was born, my mother couldn’t rest because nobody had yet been named for her father, though he’d been dead for five years.”

  Abraham stared contemplatively into the empty grate. “I wonder which of my grandchildren will soon name a child after me?”

  Sarah’s teacup clinked into the saucer. “So chilly it is in here without a fire,” she said, reaching for her shawl and slipping it around her shoulders. Why didn’t she tell him he was talking nonsense? Because they had never lied to each other. She eyed his frail figure, which for months she had tried not to notice was becoming more and more so. What a struggle it had been to stop herself from protesting when he dragged himself out of bed every morning to go to work. To let him shorten his life by labouring on. But that was how he wanted it. She hadn’t expected him to reach the age he now was and sometimes wondered if God had decided not to take him because He admired a man with such a spirit.

  Abraham saw the tears that had sprung to her eyes. His disenchantment had crystallized into the words he had just spoken. And he felt as if a great weight had been lifted off him now that he had uttered them. “Don’t cry, Sorrel. The while I’m still here.”

  But Sarah knew in her bones it would not be for long.

  The following morning Abraham rose early, as usual, to don his phylacteries and say the weekday morning prayer. They ate breakfast together as they had always done, with the ticking of the clock and the sound of Tibby lapping her milk emphasizing the homely peace.

  Abraham dunked his bagel into his tea to soften it. His face had grown so gaunt in recent weeks that his dentures felt insecure. “I’ve made up my mind to retire, Sarah.”

  Sarah managed to smile. “Whatever you want is all right with me.”

  When David called to drive his father to work, Abraham told him, too.

  “What will you do with all the time you’ll have on your hands?” David joked.

  “Some of the things I should have done years ago,” Abraham replied.

  For the next few weeks, Sarah existed in a state of heightened emotions, but revealed her feelings to nobody. Instead, she went about her domestic chores as usual, watching her husband put into practice what he had said to David. Oiling the hinges on the garden gate, which had creaked for years, and fixing new washers on the bath taps that had dripped for almost as long. Puttying the corner of the parlour window, where on blustery wet days rain seeped through. Removing the threadbare tapestry from her dressing table stool and re-upholstering it with the piece of chintz she had set aside for the purpose when new curtains were hung, after the war.

  These and countless other tasks he performed one after another. As if he wanted to make sure they were done fo
r her while there was still a man about the house. But to Sarah, it seemed as though he was gathering up all the loose ends of his life, too. Tying them together in a final knot.

  One day, she found him planting seeds in the border that lined the front path. She glanced at the packet he had left on the doorstep and saw that they were nasturtiums, which she had once told him she liked. But his long-ago promise to put some in the garden for her had, she’d thought, been forgotten.

  Don’t! she wanted to cry out. By the time the blaze of colour burgeoned from the ground, she knew he would be lying beneath it, in Blackley cemetery. What a torture this was. But she made herself smile when he raised his head to look at her.

  That afternoon, he went to visit his old friend Shloime Lipkin, Moishe’s father, whom a stroke had incapacitated. And Mr. Kletz, who had been the Sandbergs’ neighbour in Strangeways and was now a widower residing in the Jewish Home for the Aged.

  “When we were young, places to put old people in weren’t necessary,” he said sorrowfully when he returned. “Their children took care of them. But even family life is no longer what it was.”

  “Our children would never put us there,” Sarah declared, stirring the milky potato soup she was making for supper.

  “The best of children does it, Sorrel,” Abraham answered pensively. “It’s a different world these days. Everyone has their own separate life to lead. Me it won’t happen to. But it could happen to you.”

  Sarah was so shocked she had to sit down. It was a terrible thought.

  “I was thinking about Rabbi Lensky, while I was sitting with Moishe,” Abraham said. “How he used to comfort us when we were out of work and give us tea. In that broken-down old house where his shul was in those days. One day, with our help, he’d have a better shul, with a bimah to stand upon, he said to us once. The first, he’s got, though it’s still only a converted house. The second, he’s still waiting for.”

  “So tell Yankel Cohen the furrier, who was also there, out of work, when Rabbi Lensky said it, to have one made for him,” Sarah said with asperity. “He’s rich enough.”

  “Yankel doesn’t go there to pray any more. Nor do the others who went in those days. Posher shuls they go to now, with their smart wives and daughters,” Abraham replied.

  “Like our children do,” Sarah reminded him.

  “Who after I’m gone will club together to endow a memorial window for me, so they can look at it the few times a year they attend a service! But you’ll still be here to tell them a bimah for Rabbi Lensky is what I want. A memorial to the English beginnings of the Sandberg family.”

  “I’ll tell David,” was all Sarah could manage to say. But she would see that her husband’s wish was carried out.

  That evening, Abraham retired to bed immediately after supper. He had picked at his food listlessly and Sarah wondered if he would ever get up again. The brief upsurge of strength that had enabled him to do all the things he thought necessary had faded like an Indian summer.

  She remained seated at the kitchen table, beset by a sudden loneliness. How would she accustom herself to all her evenings being like this? To living without him? Her children and grandchildren would visit her and go away again. Like Abraham had said, they had their separate lives. You brought up a family and never had a minute to yourself, but in the end solitude was your reward.

  The telephone rang, cutting into her thoughts.

  “It’s me, Bobbie,” her eldest granddaughter’s lively voice said across the miles. “I was thinking about you while I polished my candlesticks, so I thought I’d give you a tinkle.”

  But when you had a big family, there was always someone thinking of you, Sarah comforted herself. “At night you do your housework, Marianne?”

  “During the day, between Martin’s feeds, I’m trying to finish my play.”

  “So when do you cook?”

  “Ralph’s very easy. He doesn’t mind baked beans and things like that.”

  “So long as you’re happy,” Sarah said. “And your husband also,” she added doubtfully.

  Marianne laughed. “He loves me, Bobbie,” she said as though this outweighed her domestic shortcomings.

  “Take your grandmother’s advice. Make Ralph a hot meal every night.” When the Sandbergs had stayed with the Berkowitzes, Malka had been a slovenly housekeeper and Chaim had not minded. But if such neglect extended to a wife’s culinary duties, sooner or later the most loving of husbands would. How could she be giving her attention to this, when Abraham was dying? When her married life would soon be ended? Because Marianne’s was just beginning, and Sarah wanted it to be as perfect as her own. “Set time aside for cooking, every day,” she instructed. “Or get up earlier and put a stew to simmer in the oven. Like I used to do, when I spent my days sewing buttons on uniforms. At home, during the Great War.”

  “Did you really do that, Bobbie? I didn’t know.”

  “All my neighbours in Strangeways did, too. Only we didn’t call ourselves career women, like you and Hannah and Shirley. Or have help in the house, like your cousin now has. We managed, and our husbands got a nourishing meal when they came home from work. To which a man is entitled when he is the breadwinner. Promise you’ll do like I said, Marianne.”

  “I promise. How’s Zaidie?”

  Sarah hesitated, then made up her mind. “Not too good. Do you have any arrangements for the weekend?”

  “Uncle Joe’s asked us to lunch on Sunday. His son, my cousin Christopher whom I’ve never met, is paying a flying visit from California. He’s a screenwriter out there. Why?”

  “If you want to see your grandfather again, come to Manchester. Your cousin Christopher you can see some other time. And don’t ring up your mother and frighten her with what I’ve said. You know how hysterical she gets, and I can do without it. You, I can tell.”

  But the next morning Abraham surprised Sarah by rising as usual.

  “Put on your best things, we’re going out,” he smiled to her.

  “It’s Thursday. I have to start preparing for Shabbos.”

  “You can fry the fish tomorrow morning. Or when we get home.”

  “Home from where?”

  “I’m taking you to Southport.”

  Sarah did not argue. Making Abraham happy was more important than frying fish. But it felt strange to be putting on the grey silk dress she wore for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. And the black coat with a velvet collar David had given her for her birthday.

  “You should have let him buy you the one he wanted to,” Abraham said.

  “What do I need a fur coat for? Most of the time it would be hanging in the wardrobe. And he has better things to do with his money.”

  Abraham laughed. “I bet he wishes his wife thought like that!”

  Abraham’s light-heartedness raised Sarah’s spirits. He had telephoned for a taxi to take them to the railway station and was laughing and joking all the way there. On the journey to the coast, they sat in companionable silence.

  “You know what’s just struck me?” Abraham said when the train was grinding to a halt at Southport. “The only other time we travelled by train in England was the day we arrived.”

  Sarah smiled reminiscently. “When our children were young, where did we ever travel to? And since they grew up and made money, they take us everywhere by car.”

  “Always with them we’ve been,” Abraham declared. “When did we have even a day out on our own?”

  “Never.”

  “That’s what I thought when I woke up this morning,” he said, helping her step down to the platform. “It’s why we’re having one now.”

  The resort was bathed in May sunlight and the Floral Gardens had never looked lovelier. Sarah watched a cabbage-butterfly dance a jig on a bed of scarlet geraniums and cast her poignant thoughts aside. For once, she would not think of the future. She would do what Abraham was doing, make the most of today.

  They ate lunch in a kosher hotel and afterwards strolled along Lord Street, greeti
ng Mancunian acquaintances who had retired to the seaside and admiring the elegant shop windows.

  “Who is Christian Dior?” Sarah inquired, perusing the label on a suit. “That outfit is like the ones Shirley and Ann wore for Martin’s Brith.”

  “For Dior originals they’re not yet rich enough,” Abraham replied. “He’s a French designer, who David says has just turned the rag trade upside down. Everyone copies him.”

  “These new clothes remind me of what we wore when I was young. I said so to the girls. Except we didn’t show our ankles. Seeing such styles again is like moving backwards in time,” Sarah smiled.

  “That, I feel today anyway,” Abraham said, slipping his arm around her waist. “Just you and me taking the air together, like we did long ago.” He pointed to a black taffeta coat, cut like a tent and with bell-sleeves. “There is a Sanderstyle.”

  “That’s a raincoat?” Sarah exclaimed.

  Abraham chuckled. “I said that to David in 1922, when he brought me his very first fashion sample to press. And compared to what he’s producing nowadays, it was a raincoat! Over a ball-gown a woman could wear that fancy garment and Shirley says plenty do.”

  But Sarah was no longer looking at it. She had just seen their reflections in the glass. The stoop-shouldered elderly man with his arm around a little old woman. Could they really be the young lovers who had walked hand in hand on the banks of the River Dvina?

  “It isn’t respectable to put your arm around me in the street,” she said to Abraham.

  He smiled down at her. “So?”

  “All right, I’ll let you.” What did respectable matter? It mattered a lot and always had, to both of them. But for some reason had temporarily stopped doing so. Just for today. He kept his arm where it was when they resumed walking, but Sarah did not mind.

  “What are you going to buy me?” she joked when he halted outside a jeweller’s shop and studied the glittering display.

  “An engagement ring.”

  Sarah thought he was joking, too. Then he turned to look at her and she knew he was not. “After fifty-two years of marriage?”