by Maisie Mosco
It had taken but one glance at the girl he loved for Howard to think it impossible that there would not be a reconciliation.
The moment they were alone he had taken Christina in his arms, what they felt for each other no less strong now than it had always been. How, then, could something so impersonal come between them?
“Please don’t do this to us, Christina,” he pleaded.
They were seated on the sofa, the last of the day’s wintry sunlight enhancing the sheen of Christina’s hair. Serving too to emphasize her pallor and the weariness circling her eyes.
Not for the first time Howard silently cursed the ghost of the past, whose presence had haunted his marriage from the day he and Christina set up home in Manchester.
Once they were man and wife, the family had kept their feelings to themselves, counselled no doubt by Sarah Sandberg, who wisely had welcomed an outsider rather than alienate one of her own.
But Christina was no ordinary outsider and her presence in a Jewish family extraordinary. The first outsider, Howard’s Aunt Lyn, was by now part of the family fabric and loved and respected by all. Martin’s wife, though, was a different dish of tea. Moira hadn’t let herself be drawn in, but that was her choice.
Christina hadn’t had a choice. History had decreed the consequences of her marrying Howard. She would require the skin of a rhinoceros not to be aware of his family’s reserve with her.
Howard stroked her hand. When he slipped that gold band on her finger, could either of them then have foreseen this? But hope had not quite died in him.
“Come home with me, Christina,” he said quietly. “It’s me you’re married to, not my family.”
She managed a wan smile. “I have tried many times to tell myself that, Howard. But with your family, it is not true. And England is not home for me. Only for you.”
“Also for Ben.”
It was the first time either had mentioned their child. As if doing so could be treading dangerous ground, and Howard refrained for the moment from stepping farther in that direction, lest doing so smash to smithereens his fragile hope.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you,” he told his wife.
Christina put that to the test. “Then come to live with me in Munich.”
To Howard it sounded like an ultimatum. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, “we have to live where my livelihood is.”
“My father would find for you a place in his business.”
“What do I know about printing?”
“You would not work in the print shop. His head clerk in the office is soon to retire. A replacement will be needed.”
Howard had a vision of himself kowtowing to his arrogant father-in-law and blotted it out. “No thanks, Christina. I’ve worked with my own father since I left school and one day his business will be mine.”
“But you would not live in Germany on principle, would you?”
Howard thought of how seeing “Dachaustrasse” on the street signs of the broad highway that bore that name always caused him to avert his eyes. Of the way he found it impossible to pass by the police station in the city centre without picturing what the Gestapo must have inflicted there upon their innocent victims. Of how he had not yet been able to bring himself to visit Dachau.
Since he and Christina had reached the point when total honesty was required – and possibly the point of no return – he replied, “Leaving principle out of it, the answer to your question is no, I couldn’t live in Germany. And it beats me how any Jew can.”
Christina got up and went to gaze through the window. For Howard it was as if the ghost stalking them had reached out and touched him with icy fingers.
“So you see,” Christina said, “you are no different from your family, Howard.”
She turned to look at him and he would not forget the tragic expression on her face. Or the dignity of her stance, silhouetted against the window in her simple black dress, as she said the words that set the seal on Ben’s future.
“You have given me much happiness and a child, and I thank you for that. But you will have to accept that your son will be raised where his father could never bring himself to live.”
Chapter 5
Sarah Sandberg’s “almonds and raisins of life” had been known to present themselves side by side, and so it was now for the family. While they feared for little Ben’s future, Laura’s wedding was being planned.
Shirley was compiling a guest-list on the evening Marianne and Howard returned from Munich – empty-handed, as Howard’s father irately put it.
It was at Shirley’s penthouse that Howard delivered his news, since his parents, together with Leona and Nathan, had been called in to help her.
“A relative is a relative!” Harry was declaiming when the doorbell chimed, and Leona went to answer it. “No matter how distant, or what they did to you years ago.”
“You sound like our late grandmother,” Shirley informed him, “but even she might have thought me entitled not to invite a fifth cousin who sided with Peter when I got my divorce. And by the way, I’m not inviting Peter.”
Nathan said on behalf of all present, “You can’t do that to Laura.”
“It’s me who’s paying for the reception.”
Marianne entered in time to hear that typically Shirley statement and paused with Howard on the room’s upper level, feeling as always on the rare occasions she came here that this could be a Hollywood film set and Shirley playing Bette Davis in her heyday.
Leona, who had returned to the table around which the others were seated, coughed to command their attention.
Harry turned and saw his sister and his son, took in their expressions, and gave Howard a piece of his mind that caused him to pale.
“Your going to Munich was a waste of the plane fare,” Shirley capped it.
“Is there nothing,” said Marianne, “that you don’t see in terms of money?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Shirley retorted. “And in my own home!”
Marianne replied, “I shan’t stay a moment longer than necessary, Shirley, lest I throw up on your expensive white carpet. If you’d like that in plain English, I have never found you more sickening than I do right now. Nor would I be here if Harry and Ann had been at home when we rang them from the airport. We then rang Uncle Nat’s and Bridie told us –”
“Save your boring explanation for someone who’s interested!” Shirley cut in. “I’m not.”
“When,” said Marianne, “were you ever interested in anyone but yourself?”
“Would you two mind cutting the dramatics?” Harry interceded. “I’d like to hear what my son has to say.”
Howard, his freckled face crumpled with distress, sat down on a decorative but uncomfortable chaise longue. “What is there to say, Dad, that you can’t see for yourself?”
The finality of his tone was such that Harry was momentarily speechless and Ann rummaged in her handbag for her pill box. Harry then snatched it from her, brandished it in the air and shouted, “See what you’ve done to your mother, Howard!”
“But your saying so helps nobody,” Nathan informed him. “What’s required is a cool head and the right advice. What are Howard’s chances of getting custody of Ben?” he asked Leona.
“Off the top of my head, Dad, I can’t answer that. I’ll discuss it with Frank when I get home.”
Howard cleared his throat. “Thanks, but it won’t be necessary.”
“What does that mean?” Harry demanded.
Marianne saw a vein on his forehead throbbing with anger and told him to calm down.
“You getting yourself into a state isn’t going to change anything,” said Howard.
“What is there to change! Ben is my grandson. Named after my father, whom he also looks like. He doesn’t belong where he now is!”
“I agree.”
“Well that’s something!”
“But I’m nevertheless not going to subject him to a tug-o’war between his m
um and his dad.”
“Does that mean you’re going to let him be brought up by Germans?”
Harry’s sallow complexion was now a purplish hue and Marianne prickled with alarm when she saw him tug at his shirt collar. A moment later he had slumped to the floor and Nathan was taking command of the situation.
Her brother’s having a stroke was for Marianne like family history repeating itself. A seizure had cut down their father, and in similar circumstances.
Much about Harry reminded her of her father: the acumen and the tenacity that had enabled Ben Klein to build a sizeable business from small beginnings; the integrity for which he was throughout his life respected; but most of all the devotion that made him the archetypal family man and the more vulnerable to the blows children are liable to deal their parents.
When Nathan rose from examining Harry and instructed Leona to phone for an ambulance, Marianne had looked at her brother’s face and seen again her father’s twisted grimace twenty-one years earlier – distress that climaxed with a family quarrel responsible then as it was now.
An hour later she was seated in a hospital waiting-room, her arm around Ann’s shoulders. Leona had called Frank and he too was there sharing the tension, he and Leona flanking Howard.
Shirley had put herself alone in a corner and Marianne thought with distaste that her mind was probably still busy planning an ostentatious wedding reception. Well, half of her mind.
“Uncle Nat’s been gone for a long time,” Shirley said glancing at her Cartier wristwatch. “And oughtn’t we to call Kate?”
“My sister’s only just returned to Israel,” said Howard, “and I’m not bringing her back unless I have to.”
“Who are you to make such decisions!” his mother said stridently. “If you’d listened to your parents in the first place, your father wouldn’t now be lying where he is!”
Howard got up and left the room.
“He didn’t need you to remind him of that,” Marianne said to Ann.
“Whose side are you on?”
“This doesn’t seem to me the time to be taking sides. Or for recrimination.”
“I agree,” said Leona.
By then Ann had disengaged herself from Marianne’s arm and Howard, shepherded by Nathan, was re-entering the room.
With them was the consultant called from his home to attend Harry. No, he must have been at a dinner, thought Marianne, noting his formal attire.
“The good news is there is no immediate danger, Mrs. Klein,” he told Ann.
She rose to face him. “And what is the bad news, Doctor?”
He removed his pince-nez and replaced them on his nose. “Well let me put it this way –”
“I’d like you to tell me straight.”
“Your husband is likely to be confined to a wheelchair.”
After he had bade them goodnight and departed, Ann said to Howard, “So you’ve lost a son and gained a business.”
But Marianne silently wagered that it would take more than being in a wheelchair to keep Harry from minding the store.
Chapter 6
Martin arrived home from an all-night work stint with his partner, Andy Frolich, the song they still had not succeeded in getting right beating like a drum in his head.
His wife came downstairs in her dressing-gown and said, “How nice to meet you!” passing him on her way to the kitchen.
Martin followed her, got himself some juice from the refrigerator and watched her make coffee.
“Gone are the days when we lived in a commune and everyone did their bit,” she remarked.
“If I had to make breakfast right now, Moira, there wouldn’t be any,” he replied. “I’m bushed. But you don’t have to make any for me. Just coffee will do.”
“Since I’m making it for Abraham Patrick and me, I may as well include you. I don’t mind doing it, Martin.”
“Then why the sarcasm? You hit me with it the minute I stepped into the house. And yearning for the days when we lived in a commune is like saying you wish we could get back our youth. Who doesn’t?”
Moira began cracking eggs into a bowl. “Instead, the years roll by and look at us now.”
Martin chose to take that literally. “You don’t look all that different to me.”
But in some ways that wasn’t true. His wife was still as strikingly beautiful as the day they met in an Oxford pub. Martin remembered catching his breath when he saw her. A tall, graceful girl in a tweed suit, a string of pearls around her neck and the satiny sheen of her long black hair enhancing her creamy complexion.
“What was that scent you used to wear?” he asked, its headiness returning to him.
“Shocking de Schiaparelli.”
“It sure turned me on!”
“Perhaps I should begin wearing it again.”
A below the belt jibe if Martin had ever heard one. And one of the ways in which Moira had changed. She knew that his frequent absences from their bed were obligatory. Due to work. That he wanted her no less than he always had.
Though Andy sometimes played around on their trips to the States or wherever, Martin never had. Rhoda Frolich, though she didn’t know it, had more to complain about than Moira. And coming home to this, after breaking his head writing lyrics all night, was all Martin needed.
Andy, on the other hand, would now be being fussed over by Rhoda, to whom he seemed to be husband and child rolled into one. The Frolichs had no kids and that was Martin’s impression. Or, he conjectured, had Rhoda set herself up in competition with her mother-in-law? Something had to account for the attention that guy got from his wife!
A picture of a limousine arriving at the commune then returned to Martin. And of a uniformed chauffeur carrying a huge earthenware dish. “Remember how Andy’s mother used to send him a Sabbath Eve dinner, every Friday?” he said with a grin.
Moira said tartly, “Well he married a shiksah, like you did. His mother didn’t want him to forget he’s a Jew.”
“In this world it would be impossible to forget,” Martin informed her. “Even for those who’d like to, and Andy’s never been one of them. All it takes is for someone to make a slip of the tongue. As for Andy’s mum – well, I’ll grant she’s a fusspot. But couldn’t your interpretation of why she sent him those dinners be all in your mind?”
Moira was now scrambling the eggs and kept her gaze fixed on the pan. “It was what Rhoda and I thought at the time, and my experience with your family has done nothing to change my impression.”
Their son’s entrance cut short what might otherwise have become a contentious discussion, and it struck Martin that once again religion was at the heart of it.
The stressful aftermath of his putting his foot down with Moira and taking his lad up north for the window consecration had lingered on and was not yet gone. But it seemed to him now that what ailed his marriage had begun long ago. Why else had Moira discussed with Rhoda what she had just revealed? When they were newly-wed wives. Rhoda a stringy-looking girl hoping to make her name as a sculptor, which she had since achieved. And Moira doing freelance work for the publishing house where she was now senior editor.
Though Martin and Andy had not known it, their wives had, from the off, felt threatened. Even though neither he nor Andy was religious in the formal sense of the word. But it wasn’t only the religion itself. Moira could not have made more clear than she just had that it was also what went with it. That well-known caricature the Jewish mother, clucking over her children and ruling their lives even after they had flown the nest – an image that didn’t fit Martin’s mum, and there were plenty like her, with the wisdom to let their children go. But it was with that stereotype preconception that Moira had married Martin, he was reflecting when she put his breakfast before him.
“If you two wouldn’t mind my breaking the silence,” said their precocious son, “I have something to tell you. I’ve decided that from now on I’d like to be called A.P.”
“Your mother’s been letting you watch t
oo much telly,” Martin said with a laugh.
“How would you like it, Dad, if you got called Martin William?” the boy asked.
Moira brought his and her own breakfast to the table, warned him not to talk with his mouth full, and sat down opposite Martin.
The only change in her appearance is she now has lines of discontent around her mouth, he thought, though what we’ve achieved materially, between us, many would find enviable. Martin would be surprised if Moira didn’t end up as editorial director. And though Frolich and Dean were not yet names on a par with Rodgers and Hart, that day could come. Martin and Andy were now writing the words and music for their first West End show, into which American money was being poured. If all went well, Broadway would follow. But Martin would happily trade success for what his marriage lacked.
Spring sunlight was flooding into the room from the picture window overlooking the rear lawn, where daffodils flaunted their bonnets beneath a weeping willow, reminding Martin of Wordsworth’s classic poem.
“I’ve never told you, have I,” he said to his son, “that the Martin I’m named after wrote poetry.” His other namesake, William, was the New Zealander grandfather he had never known. Nor, on a working trip to the country his father had come from, had he succeeded in tracing any of Ralph Dean’s relatives.
Mindful of his mother’s presence at the table, Abraham Patrick did not reply until he had swallowed the food in his mouth. “All you said was he was Grandma Marianne’s cousin who was killed in the war.”
“In an accident during the war,” Martin corrected the inaccuracy. “When he was in the RAF and your granny an ATS girl.”
“So your mother said,” Moira interceded. “And if you keep chatting to Abraham Patrick he will be late for school.”
“I’ve never been late yet,” the boy said.