by Debbie Rix
‘I’m sorry to hear that, my dear,’ said Violet, offering Rachael a cucumber sandwich. ‘But what was Charles doing in a refugee camp…?’
‘He was a student at Vienna University who volunteered to help the refugees. He was very kind and I liked him a lot, but I’d just lost my husband and then I discovered I was pregnant…’
‘I see,’ said Violet, pouring more tea. She was adept, Rachael had discovered, at the art of silence. Of simply pausing and allowing the other person to fill the space.
‘My father and I moved to London where he got a job at the university – he’s an archaeologist. After that we spent some time in Sardinia where he was in charge of a dig. I don’t talk about Sardinia…’ Rachael went on, nervously. ‘No one in New York seems to know much about it…’
‘Oh, I quite understand,’ said Violet comfortingly, reaching across and covering Rachael’s hand with her own long elegant fingers.
‘We lived there for eight months,’ Rachael continued. ‘I liked it. We lived in a little cottage by the sea. It was very beautiful.’
Violet studied her face intently. ‘I too visited Sardinia when I was very young,’ she said wistfully. ‘The people there are rather intoxicating… didn’t you find?’
‘Yes,’ said Rachael, nervously, looking down at her hands, ‘they are very charming… So… you have been there too?’
‘Oh yes… although it was a long time ago – well before the first war. I was very naïve and fell wildly in love.’
She gazed across at Rachael, who blushed slightly.
‘It was very hot and dusty, I seem to recall…’ Violet continued. ‘So… what happened after Sardinia?’
Rachael, relieved that her interrogator had moved on, said briskly:
‘We came back to England and I married Chuck – and then we came here.’
She paused, thankful that she had once again, skirted the full version of the truth.
‘How romantic,’ said Violet, wistfully. ‘Oh yes… true love. Did you get the chance to look around Vienna at all when you were in Austria? I was there myself between the wars. I recall some magnificent parties; I don’t suppose you happened to meet…’
As Violet reeled off a list of important people she had met in Vienna, Rachael, only half-listening, studied the apartment once again. It really was an extraordinary collection of art and furniture. She resolved to pluck up the courage to ask Violet how she had acquired it all. But Violet, adept as ever, sidestepped the question when it came.
‘Oh, you know… things one picks up along the way.’
It seemed to Rachael that life in New York made anything possible. People reinvented themselves – losing awkward or embarrassing pasts, gathering in new opportunities and futures on the way. Was that what Violet had done? Was that what she, Rachael, had been given the chance to do?
When she returned to her own apartment a couple of hours later, she found Chuck and the children asleep on the sofa, a storybook open and abandoned on the floor. The baby was lying comatose across his lap, and Angela had snuggled under Chuck’s arm. Rachael stood watching them all, sleeping peacefully, her heart filled with joy. Her father had been right after all. She had thought her heart would break when she left Tommaso, but she had been given a chance for a new life, and had found true contentment. She loved her husband, she loved her children and she loved New York. Angela was in a good nursery school. Little Tom, at seven months old, was a happy, healthy baby. Charles had been promoted and was beginning to make his way in the world. He talked of them buying a holiday home – a summer house on Long Island where she could take the children for two or three months and escape the heat of the city. It seemed to Rachael that the years of struggle were finally at an end. Even Chuck’s parents had accepted their curious Hungarian daughter-in-law. The family drove up to Vermont periodically – for Tom’s christening, for Thanksgiving – but Rachael decided to ask Chuck if they could remain in New York for the Christmas holidays.
‘I’d like to do it myself,’ she said to Chuck the next day over breakfast. ‘My mother taught me all sorts of wonderful things to cook at Christmas and I’d like to do it for you and the children, and your parents. Please Chuck?’
‘Well, OK,’ he’d relented. ‘I’ll call my parents and break the news… My mother’s always done Christmas, but I’m sure she’ll get over it – eventually!’
That evening, he came back home from work and announced that his mother had agreed to spend Christmas in New York. ‘She wasn’t too pleased, mind… ’ he said, standing behind Rachael as she washed up a pan in the sink. He kissed the side of her neck, and she swung round and kissed him back.
‘Thank you Chuck! We’ll have a wonderful time – I promise.’
‘Oh…’ he said, as he took a beer from the refrigerator, ‘I’ve got to go to Chicago tomorrow. I’ll just be away overnight. ‘
He left the house the following morning in a cheery mood carrying a small overnight bag carefully packed by Rachael. It contained one clean shirt, a fresh set of underwear, pyjamas, a washbag and, nestling in the middle, a photograph of the family. Chuck always travelled with a photograph of Rachael and the children.
‘I’ll just be away twenty-four hours,’ he said over breakfast, his packed bag standing ready in the hall. ‘I’ve got a couple of meetings in Chicago and I’ll be back on the first flight out tomorrow. Why they can’t just do the meeting on the phone, I don’t know… but that’s banking.’
Rachael stood in the bay window of the sitting room holding baby Thomas in her arms, as Chuck walked down the road towards Third Avenue. He turned as he reached the corner, and looked back at Rachael; she flapped Tom’s hand up and down, whispering in his ear, ‘Wave to Daddy.’ Chuck waved back before jumping into a cab.
As soon as Chuck had left, Rachael called a local store, and asked if they could deliver a Christmas tree to the apartment that morning. It would be fun to decorate it while Chuck was away and would be a surprise for him when he returned the following day. After she had dressed the children, she stood excitedly in the window of the sitting room waiting for the delivery truck to arrive.
‘Just put the Christmas tree there.’ Rachael said, pointing to a place at the centre of the bay window. The delivery man dragged the tall tree through the sitting room and positioned it carefully in its stand. It practically reached the ceiling.
The children were delighted. Tom sat on the sitting room floor rocking back and forward, opening and closing his fists in excitement. Angela walked around the tree studying every angle. ‘I’d like to decorate it today, Mommy,’ she said. ‘They have a tree at nursery school and we all decorated it last week.’
‘Then we shall,’ declared Rachael. ‘I know we used to wait till Christmas Eve, but I thought it would be nice for Daddy to come home to.’
She put the baby into the large pram and bumped it down the steps of the brownstone. Then, holding Angela’s hand, she walked several blocks until she reached Bloomingdale’s. She took the elevator to the Christmas department. The abundance of Christmas decorations was one of the delights of living in America; even in Vermont she had discovered a store that sold nothing but tinsel, tree decorations and fairy lights throughout the year.
With a basket balanced on top of the pram, Rachael wandered between the aisles picking up Christmas lights and glass baubles.
‘You can each choose two things for the tree,’ she said to the children.
Angela ran around peering into baskets and returned with a glittering unicorn and a huge tinsel star.
‘For the top of the tree, Mommy,’ she said eagerly.
Rachael pushed the pram between the displays so Tom could choose something. He grabbed a teddy bear with his little pudgy hands.
‘Put that back, Tom, we don’t need a teddy bear on the tree.’
The little boy grizzled, but they finally agreed on a chubby-faced Russian doll wearing a bright red coat and a blue muffler, and a pair of straw angels with wings.
&nbs
p; When her basket was filled, Rachael paid at the till, went down in the elevator, and walked slowly towards Central Park. She stopped briefly at the children’s zoo before heading south to the skating rink at the Rockefeller Center opposite St Patrick’s Cathedral. They sat together on a bench and watched the skaters twirling around.
‘I wanna go skating, Mommy,’ said Angela. ‘I’m old enough now… I’m three and a half.’
Angela had developed quite a pronounced New York accent since she’d started nursery school.
‘I know, honey,’ said Rachael. ‘But not today.’
‘But you promised,’ Angela complained. ‘You said when I was old enough…’
‘I know I did, but I can’t leave little Tom on his own in the pram, while you and I skate. When Daddy’s back home, we’ll come together, as a family.’
She thought about that word – family. She realised that for the first time since her mother had died, she really felt that she was part of a family. Her mother’s death, and that of József, had created such a sense of loss. Her own father had done his best to fill the void and was the kindest man she had ever known – until she met Chuck. She had learned to love Chuck – her father had been right about that. It wasn’t the tempestuous passion of her brief liaison with Tommaso, nor indeed the first, innocent tender love she had felt for József. Instead, it was a relationship based on trust and mutual respect. Each evening she found herself waiting for the sound of his key in the lock, for his cheery voice as he called to her and the children. He adored Angela and Tom, and she loved him for that. He often said he couldn’t love them anymore if they were his own.
Her life had taken such a complicated winding path and it was only now that she could look back and see it had all been leading to this point; where she was a happy, much-loved wife and mother, living a good life with two healthy children in New York – the most exciting city on the planet.
‘Come on,’ she said to Angela, ‘we should be getting home.’ She looked up at the impressive façade of St Patrick’s Cathedral. She had been brought up as a Catholic when her mother was alive. But George was an atheist, and after her mother’s death, the ritual of Sunday mornings spent in church had ceased. Now she considered taking her own children to the cathedral. What would her parents-in-law make of it? Stolid Protestants both – they would probably be horrified at the idea of ‘their’ grandchildren being brought up as Catholics. She’d discuss it with Chuck when he got home.
Rachael and Angela, watched by Tom, spent a happy afternoon decorating the tree. She wrapped up a special present she had bought for Chuck – a vinyl copy of ‘True Love’ – and placed it beneath the tree. She had loved three men in her short life – all in a slightly different way. But Chuck, she now realised, was her best friend, someone she could rely on, and if that wasn’t true love, what was?
That night, once the children were in bed, she sat alone on the sofa as the white lights flickered on the tree and wrote an airmail letter to her father.
My darling Papa,
It’s been weeks since we corresponded. I hope you are well and that Mrs Roper is looking after you. I have just put up our Christmas tree. It reaches almost to the ceiling of our apartment. Can you imagine? Mrs Roper would love it. It is the biggest tree I’ve ever seen – well, apart from the one at the Rockefeller Center! Do you remember me telling you about it? They skate there and it’s so pretty with all the lights. I took Angela and Tom there this afternoon. Angela is so keen to learn to skate and I have promised to teach her.
How are you, dear Papa? Is work going well? Do write soon and tell me. Or better still – might you come out and see me? You could fly here, you know. It’s expensive, but I’m sure Chuck would pay for a ticket. He is such a generous man, and it would be so lovely to see you. I do so want you to spend some time with the children before they get too much older. Angela is so grown-up – she is already at nursery school and little Tom… well, he’s not so little anymore. Do say you will come, Papa. Perhaps when you break up from university.
I enclose a photograph of myself with the children. It was taken at Thanksgiving.
I am thinking of you.
All my love,
Rachael
The following morning, Rachael woke to find that it had snowed in the night. The street outside, normally quite busy with cars and delivery vans, was silent and still. Looking out of the sitting room bay window, she observed people tramping past her house, wearing fur-lined boots and heavy overcoats. The blanket of snow had transformed this frantic place into an urban fairy story. Everything was peaceful and quiet. She imagined children all over the city excited at the prospect of a day off school; ‘snow days’, they called them in America. It was such a happy-sounding description. They’d be in their apartments drinking hot chocolate persuading their mothers to take them to the parks and have snowball fights, instead of boarding the school bus. It reminded her of the blissful days she had spent with her mother in the park opposite their apartment in Budapest. She had a beautiful dark red coat and her mother knitted her a long red scarf to match. Rachael had loved that scarf.
She rang Angela’s nursery and was surprised to discover they intended to remain open. But Angela was keen to stay at home and play outside in the snow.
‘I don’t want to go to school,’ Angela complained, her arms clamped to her sides, as her mother attempted to force them into her coat. ‘I want to stay here with you and Tom.’
‘I need to go to the market this morning…’ said Rachael. ‘You’ll be bored. If you go to school, I’ll collect you at lunchtime and we can have a lovely afternoon together, playing in the snow. Please, Angela – put on your coat.’
Once Angela was dressed, Rachael fed the baby’s arms into his warm woollen jacket and pulled his hood up over his pink ears. She put mittens onto his little fingers and, once he was in the pram, wrapped him up in a warm blanket. After dropping Angela at nursery, she posted the letter to her father, praying, as she did so, that it would get there in time for Christmas.
She bought some beef at the meat counter of the local store, and then wheeled Tom slowly back to the apartment building. A fog was descending over the city, but with luck it would dissipate by lunchtime.
She planned to make a meat loaf for dinner – it was a good warming dish for a winter evening, and one of Chuck’s favourites. As she bumped the pram up the brownstone’s stairs, she heard a distant rumble. She looked around and saw a plume of smoke rising up. It seemed to be coming from way downtown. A fire, maybe, she thought, or a gas explosion?
Inside the apartment, she put Tom in his cot for a nap, and began to mince the meat. Chuck had bought her a metal mincing machine that she could fix onto her food mixer. As she forced the lump of beef into the tube, spirals of meat twirled out of the mincer into a bowl. She chopped onions and shredded a carrot and some cheese; then made breadcrumbs from an old loaf. After whisking eggs, milk, salt and pepper together, she added the bread, beef, onion, cheese and carrot. She packed it into a loaf tin and then spread the top with a mixture of ketchup and brown sugar. Setting it in the oven to bake she wandered through to the sitting room, where she sat at the desk in the window and began to write her Christmas cards. She was relieved to see that the fog had lifted a little.
At lunchtime, with the meat loaf cooling on a rack in the kitchen, she woke the baby, put him in the pram and, taking her cards, went to collect Angela from nursery school.
On the way back to the apartment, she shoved the pile of cards into the postbox. As she did so, she became aware of the sound of sirens. Several police cars roared past; a fire truck and an ambulance following behind.
She stopped in the drugstore to pick up some cotton wool and asked the lady behind the counter: ‘Is there a fire or something…? I noticed the ambulance and police cars.’
‘Oh! Haven’t you heard? There’s been a terrible air accident. Two planes collided this morning just outside Brooklyn.’
Rachael went cold. Chuck was due t
o fly home that morning from Chicago.
‘Do you know where the planes came from?’ she asked.
‘No… but it’s a terrible mess, I hear; one crashed into houses at Park Slope. It’s just awful – all those poor people. And just before Christmas too.’
Rachael felt a rising sense of panic. She told herself to calm down. Hundreds of planes flew into New York each day, why should it be his plane? She wanted to go home, to check on her meat loaf, to give the children their lunch. She wanted everything to be just as it always was. For Chuck to come home later, and say in his breezy way: ‘Hi honey, I’m home. Gosh what a terrible flight. It’s good to be back… Something smells delicious – what’s for dinner?’
And she would say, ‘Your favourite. Meat loaf.’
‘Oh, honey,’ he’d say, ‘You spoil me…’
But instead she turned the pram towards Brooklyn and, holding Angela firmly by the hand, began to walk fast.
Angela began to whine.
‘Mommy, Mommy, you’re hurting.’
Rachael couldn’t hear her daughter. All she was aware of was the pounding of her heart in her ears. She walked as swiftly as she could, without actually running, but Angela was slowing her down. Finally, Rachael picked her up and put her at one end of the pram, opposite Tom. She hardly noticed traffic, or lights, or other people. She just had to get as close as possible to that accident site and see for herself that it wasn’t his plane. Then they would go home, and have lunch, and everything would be fine.
The children both began to cry and she soon realised she could never walk all the way to Brooklyn. She hailed a cab and somehow squeezed the children and the pram into the back.
‘Brooklyn please…’
‘Haven’t you heard… there’s been an accident. I’m not sure how close I can get. They closed the bridges.’
The driver dropped them south of Little Italy in Canal Street.
‘This is as far as I can go, I’m afraid. If you don’t need to go there, I’d advise you to get back in the cab and go back uptown. It’s chaos down there…’