by Maisie Mosco
Now, she imagined Janis and Jeremy tiptoeing into their mother’s sickroom when they came home from school. And Jake’s taking them to visit her during her frequent spells in hospital, afterwards returning with them to a house that no longer resounded with Julia’s laughter.
The children had said that their mother had laughed a lot. And that their family was known among friends as the Four Jays, on account of their all having names beginning with that letter.
When Laura first met Jake, at a cocktail party in Johannesburg, there was about him a sadness no longer there. Would he have invited her to dine with him if she hadn’t remarked that his face was the kind she wouldn’t mind photographing?
Probably not, she thought now. It was as though he had needed prodding from a trough of despondency in order to return her smile. Also as if he hadn’t really looked at her until she made that remark.
“I’m not chatting you up, I’m a professional photographer,” she recalled saying.
“Then I’ll make a bargain with you,” he had replied. “I’ll let you take my picture if you’ll let me take you to dinner.”
Their relationship had proceeded from there. Blossomed described it better. But it had not included their sleeping together and Laura would have been surprised if it had. She was aware from the first that Jake was a conventional man. Nor had she failed to see the irony of his kindling in her heart what her long list of bed mates had notably not kindled.
Love was the word for it. And with love’s entrance her belief that marriage was something she could well do without had made its exit. She could remember pitying Marianne the necessity to defer not just to Ralph, but to marriage itself, which had then seemed to her the proverbial ball-and-chain, serving to slow down the progress of an otherwise independent woman.
Only now was Laura able to see that sharing your life with someone who cared deeply for you, and you for him, was a good deal more fulfilling than the freedom she had valued.
She returned to the living-room with the first aid box and the dustpan and brush, warmed by her thoughts, congratulating herself on her wise handling of her first family crisis. All would be well. She was still feeling her way with two kids she barely knew.
Come to that, what did she really know about Jake, other than that he’d been happily married for twenty years? Or he about her? A romance largely conducted over the phone, with the infrequent meetings its participants’ working lives had allowed, was not conducive to their boring each other with the details of a now defunct past.
But what had gone before didn’t matter. Only the present and future does, Laura said to herself. Jeremy and Janis sucking Bessie’s cut thumb was the nearest they would come to a blood tie, she thought with a smile. But the concern Jake’s kids had shown for Bessie augured well for the tie that Fate had imposed upon all three.
Laura’s great-grandmother would have told her that she was wrong in one respect: That what had gone before did matter. But Sarah Sandberg had learned that the hard way and so it was to be for Laura.
Chapter 9
As spring gave way to summer, Marianne’s working day extended into the evening, which she had not allowed to happen when Ralph was alive.
Now, there seemed little point in her not returning to her desk after eating a snack while she watched the Six O’clock News. Or was it that she was continuing to use her work as a therapy against loneliness? And how long could she go on not bothering to cook for one?
Though her mother and grandmother too were widowed in middle-age, and neither had remarried, both were of that sensible ilk of woman whom widowhood does not cause to neglect herself.
If they saw me in front of the TV set with a sandwich and calling it my dinner, the riot act would surely be read!
These were Marianne’s wry thoughts when she returned to her typewriter on a sultry July evening. The first draft of her new book was almost completed, and if she didn’t call a halt to her present régime the finished manuscript would be delivered long before deadline date.
She was promising herself that she would take tomorrow afternoon off to watch the Wimbledon Ladies’ Final, when the phone shrilled beside her.
“Am I interrupting the author at work?” said her cousin Ronald.
Since the family had long thought her a “workaholic,” Marianne was accustomed to such remarks. But unlike his sister, Shirley, Ronald’s tone was dry, not sarcastic.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” she replied, “but for you I don’t mind.”
“I need to talk to you, Marianne.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“Not on the phone, if you don’t mind. Could you spare me an hour if I drive over after surgery?”
“I’ll have the kettle on when you get here.”
After she had rung off, a memory returned to Marianne of herself in a call box dialling her grandmother’s number, when something or other had gone wrong in her young life. There were buses and lorries rumbling by as she made the call, so it must have been when the Kleins still lived behind the shop near to Salford docks, before a wartime bomb destroyed both home and business at one fell swoop, precipitating the family’s departure for leafy Prestwich and the midst of Manchester’s north side Jewish community. An empty shop nearby had enabled Ben Klein to continue trading but had not included living accommodation.
Back with the phone call, Marianne could still see herself with dripping wet hair – it must have been raining – a red knitted muffler around her neck and re-lived her relief when her gran picked up the receiver. Who but Sarah did the whole family, adults and children too, turn to for advice? The old lady had retained her faculties to the end, and if she were still alive it wouldn’t be Marianne to whom Ronald would come after his surgery tonight.
She had not yet returned her attention to her work when the telephone rang again.
“Got a minute to spare, Marianne?”
“Sure, Uncle Nat.”
“When did you last visit Harry?” he said without preamble.
“If you rang up to prick my conscience –”
“That isn’t the reason for my call.”
He had succeeded in doing so, nevertheless. Though Marianne spoke regularly on the phone to Ann, three weeks had slipped by without her visiting her brother. Harry’s rudeness to everyone and anyone was becoming hard to take.
Her uncle’s next words confirmed it. “Harry has just forbidden me to cross his doorstep again, and in my opinion Ann is heading for a breakdown.”
“She seemed fine when I last called her,” Marianne replied, “and you don’t have to take what Harry said seriously –”
“You’re wrong on both counts, Marianne. Ann has become very good at bottling her feelings and sooner or later the cork will blow off. As for Harry – well, he’s become an expert at manipulating both her and Howard. What I’m saying is, he uses their fear that crossing him will have dire results to get his own way. Since I’m not about to let him manipulate me, this evening I gave him a lecture which resulted in nothing more dire than his barring me from the house.”
“What had Ann to say about that?” Marianne inquired.
“That she isn’t prepared to increase her anxiety by going against him and I had better stay away. But someone has to do something, Marianne, and I suggest it be you.”
With that, her uncle rang off. Did what he had been telling her account for his strained tone? Perhaps. But Uncle Nat also had troubles of his own. He had said recently that he wasn’t getting on too well with Leona nowadays. Nor had Aunt Rebecca yet returned from Florida.
It was no secret that Leona had blamed her father for her mother’s once turning to the bottle, Marianne reflected. Or that her childhood was far from ideal. And it looked now as though Aunt Rebecca’s staying with her widowed sister might become a permanent arrangement. Leona was at present in Fort Lauderdale visiting her – and probably trying to persuade her to come home.
Marianne did not let herself contemplate what might transpire be
tween Leona and her father if her mother said that she would never come back. Florida was a long way off and that would be for Leona tantamount to losing her mother at her father’s hand.
As for what was going on at Harry’s house… Marianne pitied Ann. Howard, too. Wasn’t the separation from his child trouble enough?
Other than listen when he called her, there was nothing that Marianne could do to help Howard. But she could and would offer to give Ann a break. Take over nursing Harry – teeth gritted! – for a few days, while Ann enjoyed some peace and quiet here in Marianne’s cottage.
She can take walks and sit in the garden, it will be like a country holiday for her –
The sound of a car door slamming interrupted Marianne’s planning. She watched Ronald walk up the path, noting how handsome he still was. As much like Uncle Nat in appearance as ever, and as silver haired nowadays. Ronald, though, had gone grey at an early age, Marianne recalled, and who could wonder? Their son, Alan, was a joy to Ronald and to his wife, Diane. But Sharon, their daughter, was born brain damaged. Diane had dedicated her life to caring for her to the exclusion of all else.
Marianne opened the door and received a hug.
“I got carried away by my thoughts and forgot to put the kettle on, Ronald –”
“A frequent occurrence, no doubt,” he said following her into the kitchen, “and especially now Ralph isn’t here to prod you. How are you doing in that respect, Marianne?”
She put the kettle on and unhooked a couple of mugs from the Welsh dresser. “I don’t give myself time to think about it.”
“Then may I, as a doctor, say it might be better if you did? Eventually you’re going to have to, Marianne, and the sooner the healthier. Burying yourself in work is just putting off the moment when you finally come to terms with your loss and begin adjusting.”
“I’ll bear that in mind, Ronald.”
“You do. And could you manage to rustle me up a snack? I didn’t have time to eat before surgery.”
Marianne went to rummage in the refrigerator. How did you come to terms with losing not just your loving companion, but the rock to lean upon you hadn’t appreciated until you lost him?
When they were seated at the table, Ronald munching bread and cheese, and Marianne nibbling a biscuit, he said hesitantly, “You’re going to be upset by what I’m about to tell you, but I must. There are signs that Uncle Nat ought no longer to be practising medicine.”
Marianne was unable to hide her distress. “Are you saying that he’s cracking up?”
“If that’s how you want to put it, I’m afraid so.”
But Marianne did not want to believe it. “Couldn’t you be mistaken, Ronald?”
“Since I’m in partnership with him, no. It isn’t that he’s making wrong diagnoses. For that he’s able to rely on his long experience. But there have been a couple of instances of his prescriptions being questioned by the pharmacists the patients have taken them to –”
“Even young people make the odd mistake,” said Marianne.
“Uncle Nat didn’t when he was young, nor did he until very recently. And a doctor making a mistake can be highly dangerous, Marianne. In the two cases I’ve cited, the patients were lucky. The pharmacists had been supplying their drugs for years and rang the surgery to check that the higher dosages were intentional.”
Marianne refilled their mugs with tea and sipped some of hers. “Why are you discussing this with me?” she said after a pause. “Oughtn’t you to be talking about it to your other senior partner?”
“Lou knows about it, Marianne, but he isn’t taking it seriously. He’s Uncle Nat’s age, remember, also his closest friend. He wouldn’t want to take it seriously, would he?”
Marianne fetched a solitary Eccles cake from the old-fashioned larder that led off the kitchen. “This is all I can offer you for dessert, Ronald.”
“I didn’t come for a banquet.”
“Nor could you have come expecting me to provide a solution to your problem.”
Ronald bit into the cake and said after digging a currant from between his front teeth, “I came to tell you how I’m going to solve it. I’m leaving the practice.”
“Couldn’t that be equated with leaving a sinking ship, and with two elderly men you’re fond of still aboard? And how would your departure help the patients?”
“Without me Uncle Nat and Lou will retire,” Ronald answered. “They’ve always said that in that event they would.” He paused and glanced away, but Marianne had seen that there were tears in his eyes.
“I remember the day I joined them,” he said collecting himself. “How honoured I felt that they’d invited me into the practice they’d shared since they were little more than lads. It wouldn’t be putting it too strongly to say that I looked up to them, Marianne. And to Uncle Nat especially. No need to tell you that I’d never got on with my dad. And if I had to say which brother was more like a father to me, I’d say it was Uncle Nat.”
Marianne hoped her Uncle David hadn’t known it, though he probably had. He had been a highly perceptive man.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t love my dad,” Ronald added. “And the way he died – well, I didn’t get the chance to set things right. To tell him how much I admired his achievement even though I left it to my sister to be his right hand in the business.”
Our family hasn’t gone short of people who left it too late to make their peace, thought Marianne.
“Returning to the gist of the matter,” said Ronald, “I’ve decided to facilitate my elderly partners’ retirement by making a real change in my own life. Diane’s too. I wouldn’t say she’s really had a life, would you?”
Marianne shook her head.
When Sharon was little, Diane used to bring her to Sarah’s Sabbath tea-parties, and there the child had lain on the parlour sofa, in a private world where none could reach her. Though Ronald had continued coming to the family gathering, bringing his son, Diane’s accompanying him had suddenly ceased.
From then on Ronald had had to watch his wife become a near-recluse, and it seemed to Marianne now that only for funerals did Diane emerge from the imprisonment she had imposed upon herself.
“How will your leaving the practice help Diane?” she asked Ronald. She made herself smile. “Not thinking of retiring yourself, are you? – and keeping her company all day.”
“On the contrary. I’m all set to begin a new career,” he replied. “In New York, as a matter of fact, and Diane is going with me.”
“What about Sharon?”
“Sharon,” said Ronald gruffly, “is now twenty-one. Her birthday was last month, and Diane broke down and cried, which she hasn’t done for years. I was choking with emotion myself. Alan had sent Sharon a birthday card. He never fails to. It was propped on the sideboard with one from Diane and me, and I had to stop myself from saying, ‘What a bloody farce!” Sharon wouldn’t know a birthday card from her big toe…
“Diane asked me to cut the birthday cake, she always makes one for Sharon, but I didn’t get around to it. We had to blow out the candles first, and when we’d done so I heard myself say, ‘There go twenty-one wasted years of our married life.’ It was then that Diane broke down. But instead of comforting her, I told her I couldn’t go on watching her martyr herself to no purpose. Either she stopped it, or I was getting out.”
Ronald paused reflectively, fingering his tie. “I didn’t know I was going to say it, Marianne. It just came pouring out of me. I expected Diane to tell me to get the hell out. Instead – well, she said she hadn’t realized what she was doing to me. I believe that, though you may not. You see the way it’s been – as if nobody but Sharon existed for her. And I have to say that was very hard for Alan while he was growing up. He was only seven when Sharon was born, and when I think back –”
“It doesn’t seem to have harmed him,” said Marianne, “and I don’t recall his ever being other than kind and gentle with his sister. You’re blessed with a son who is right for the calli
ng he’s chosen, Ronald. Alan is equipped by nature to be a pastoral rabbi and his flock will be fortunate to have him.”
“I agree, and my hope is that one day the way he’s turned out will be the consolation to his mother that it is to me. When we get to New York, Sharon will live where she will be well cared for. The trust fund my father-in-law set up for her will pay for it. As for the new career I mentioned, I’ll be working with two of Diane’s American relations who own a clinic.”
“I’ll miss you, Ronald, but I couldn’t be more pleased for you.”
“Thanks. But once Uncle Nat is retired – well, I want you to promise that you won’t let him go to seed.”
Why me? she silently replied.
Chapter 10
While Ronald was planning his move to New York, Leona was experiencing a slice of life in Florida which in some respects seemed to her more like a soap opera.
Well, not exactly experiencing, but observing, she thought while surveying her mother and wishing she had inherited Rebecca’s dark colouring that allowed her to bask in the sun.
They had been on the patio all morning, Rebecca in a well-cut swimsuit, her long legs as trim as when she was young, Leona feeling frumpy and frowsty beside her – who wouldn’t when they had to keep their arms and legs covered lest the ultra-violet rays do their worst to the sort of skin that goes with red hair?
Nor had Leona inherited her mother’s stature. Like Marianne she was petite, as their grandmother had been, and as Leona’s daughter was.
“You’re looking very pensive, darling,” Rebecca said.
“I was thinking of how the genes that run in a family make their mark, one way and another, in each succeeding generation,” Leona summarized her thoughts.