Out of the Ashes

by Maisie Mosco

  Not that Sarah had required proof to bolster her faith in God, Marianne thought as the memory receded and another replaced it – of a long gone Seder night when she had seen her Uncle Nat bite back a retort after Aunt Rebecca said something to goad him. Oft were the times, too, when Rebecca had pointedly ignored Nathan at family gatherings. But Marianne, though she had conjectured as to the hell their private life must be, had never seen her uncle less than polite to his wife.

  It would be he who conducted the Seder in Manchester tonight, with the old-fashioned courtliness that went with his distinguished appearance. Courtliness, though, was just an acquired veneer, Marianne cogitated while lathering her shoulders in the shower, and not in every case did it live side by side with the integrity that had impelled Nathan to maintain his marital obligations to the last.

  Marianne’s affection for him had not prohibited her from feeling sorry also for Rebecca. It was not in Nathan’s nature ever to have walked out on her. But why had it taken her the major part of her life to put an end to their miserable existence together?

  Possibly her long interlude in Florida had served to restore her bruised spirit. The man she had met there could not but have helped rebuild her ego, since she was now Mrs. Pitkin. And Nathan now reading English Literature at Manchester University, at the age of seventy-four.

  So much for Ronald’s asking me not to let Uncle Nat go to seed! thought Marianne, though for a while it had looked as though he might. A further blow, the death of his friend Lou, had followed Ronald’s departure to the States. But after his divorce he had miraculously put himself back together. As though that final severing with the past had released the man he had always known himself to be.

  While drying her hair Marianne envisaged the other women in the family making themselves presentable for Seder night, as she was. Dressing in your best was part of the tradition, along with the eating of the symbolic bitter herbs and hard-boiled eggs. Ann had probably been cooking all day, with Harry breathing down her neck from his wheelchair, and Marianne hoped there would not be fireworks of the emotional kind when the Mancunian branch of the family gathered at their house for the Seder.

  Ann’s asking Uncle Nat to bring his girlfriend would not go down well with Leona. Nor would Harry take kindly to Nathan’s presence, though he now permitted him the occasional visit.

  Marianne could not rid herself of the feeling that her agreement to Laura’s suggestion that they stop going north for the festivals was committing family treason. But another feeling went with it. Relief. When the whole clan got together, the atmosphere could be likened to being sealed in a pressure cooker waiting for the lid to blow off, which it frequently did.

  Not that the coming together of those of us who live in London can be guaranteed to go smoothly, she thought while pinning Sarah’s brooch to her red silk blouse. And Marianne’s bête noire would be present tonight! Shirley was spending the Passover with her daughter.

  Chapter 2

  “I thought, once Hitler was beaten, we could put what he stood for behind us,” Shirley was bemoaning when Marianne entered the living-room.

  Laura, beside her by the fireplace, replied, “But we’ve learned otherwise. Nor is it just the Fascists we now have to contend with.”

  Laura kissed Marianne. “Sorry about the delay in greeting you. What you came in at the end of was Mum’s reaction to hearing that Jake and Martin are on duty outside the synagogue during this evening’s service.”

  Bessie, resplendent in royal blue velvet, was hovering beside the table, the dish of bitter herbs in her hands. “I’m not sure where to put this, Mummy.”

  “Since Daddy will be conducting the Seder, darling, try to find space for it beside his place.”

  “Can I move the salt and pepper pots?”

  “If you have to.”

  “This reminds me of when we were little and our grandmother let us lay the Seder table,” Marianne reminisced to Shirley.

  “My own recollection of that,” said Shirley, “is your trying to tell me where everything should be placed.”

  “But I wouldn’t have got away with it, would I?” Marianne’s attempts to chat with Shirley invariably got no further than one sentence.

  “If anyone who shouldn’t tries to get into the synagogue with Daddy and Martin on duty, I wish them luck!” said Bessie to Laura.

  Shirley exclaimed, “It isn’t right for a child of nine to know about such things!”

  “Jewish kids in the eighties could hardly not know,” Laura answered, “since their kindergartens and Hebrew classes now have to be protected. If you read the news in your Jewish Gazette, Mum, as well as the personal column, you’d know that there’s been no shortage of incidents in the first half of this decade. When someone put a bomb outside the Chief Rabbi of Austria’s flat in the summer of ’82, I thought back to us discussing the neo-Nazis at Uncle Nat’s, the day of the window consecration.”

  “Your mother isn’t the ignoramus you seem to think!” Shirley flashed. “I could have told you that day that there’d already been an attack on a Vienna synagogue, and two Jews killed. The paper I read said it was done by Arab terrorists –”

  “Why didn’t you tell us, Granny?” Bessie asked.

  “Because I’m not one for political discussions, sweetheart, I never was. It’s bad enough that these things are happening. We don’t have to talk about them and especially not in front of you.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Mum!” Laura expostulated. “One of Bessie’s little friends lives in Edgware, where some Jewish kids had bottles thrown at them a few months ago. She also goes to school with a child whose big brother is at Preston Polytechnic, and he didn’t keep it a secret from his kid sister when swastikas were daubed on a college Jewish Society poster.

  “I can’t raise Bessie in a vacuum,” Laura went on. “She has to live in the real world.”

  “And I have to say,” Marianne added, “that I myself was sickened when I drove past Chalk Farm tube station one day last autumn and saw painted on a wall: ‘Hitler is right.’”

  Bessie was listening with interest. “But Hitler is dead now, isn’t he?”

  “Unfortunately,” said her mother, “his ideas seem to have lived on.”

  “There you go again, upsetting the child!” said Shirley.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said to you, Mum? She has to live in the real world.”

  “But there’s no need to spell everything out for her.”

  “If Jake were here, I’d let him deal with you, Mum!”

  “My daughter is no longer her own person,” Shirley said to the air.

  “My marriage is a partnership,” Laura informed her. “Jake has raised two smashing kids and I trust his judgement. Would you say you made a good job of raising me? Ask yourself why I finally ran away from home, which Bessie will never feel impelled to do.”

  “Is there nothing you intend keeping from that child!” Shirley marched from the room.

  “Before you run after her, Bessie,” said Laura, “move the herb dish a little closer to where Daddy will sit. He has long arms, but I think you’ve put it where even he would have a job to reach it without getting up from his chair!”

  They watched the little girl do as she was bid and hastily depart.

  “Bessie is our family comforter,” Laura said dryly. “When anyone is upset, or angry, she rushes to kiss and cuddle them.”

  “If your mother lived with you,” Marianne responded, “Bessie would be kept extremely busy! But I do wish you wouldn’t have a go at your mum in my presence, Laura.”

  “Since when were you easily embarrassed?”

  “But she is.”

  “That doesn’t stop her from embarrassing others. You should hear some of the things she says to Jake. Like how can a man in his fifties keep a woman my age satisfied?”

  “She doesn’t like him, does she?”

  “But I think she finds him attractive and it’s causing her problems. One of which is she is probably je
alous of her own daughter –”

  The conversation ended abruptly when Laura’s stepdaughter entered.

  Janis came to greet Marianne, then eyed the table proudly. “Laura let Bessie and me lay the festive board without any help.”

  “And it looks lovely,” Marianne congratulated her, surveying the gleaming crystal wine glasses and the silver candelabra enhancing the white damask cloth.

  “If you’re wondering why we moved the table in here from the dining-room, Marianne,” said Janis with a laugh, “we had to put both of the extra leaves in it, and there was then no room for all the chairs.”

  “We’re having some last minute and unexpected guests,” Laura told Marianne. “Lyn is in town to appear with Arnold at a function.”

  “She said when I last spoke to her that she’d refused.”

  “He managed to persuade her, so I asked them to join us. Matthew is coming, too. When I called him he said he hadn’t been to a Seder for years, and it would also be a way of spending an evening with his mum.”

  Did Matthew’s not mentioning his dad mean he and Arnold were still at daggers drawn? Marianne wondered. Even if they weren’t, what could there ever be between them other than a strained truce?

  “Matthew asked could he bring Pete,” Laura went on, “and of course I said yes. Sir Arnold Klein won’t be too pleased about that, but it’s too bad!”

  Marianne’s brother had become even more pompous since being knighted in the New Year Honours List. But Laura’s remark was twofold. Matthew’s bringing along the man he lived with was enough to make the matzo stick in Arnold’s throat.

  Laura noted Marianne’s expression. “I’ll make sure to seat Arnold well away from them.”

  “You better had!”

  “But I think Matthew and Pete are lovely people,” Janis declared, “and their private life is their business.”

  Marianne watched her leave the room, a tall, slender girl whose tawny hair still had about it a sun-bleached look, though it was now three years since she had lived in South Africa. Her accent, like her father’s and her brother’s, would continue to denote her country of origin whose politics all three held in contempt. The opposite of Ralph’s talking like a New Zealander and being proud of it throughout his life, thought Marianne.

  Laura interrupted her musing. “Janis has turned into a stunner, hasn’t she? And if she doesn’t get a place at a London college, come the autumn she’ll be leaving home.”

  “Would that upset you?”

  “Well, it’s taken us till now to become a real family,” Laura replied, “and I’d like us to stay together for as long as possible. Jake, too. Edinburgh would be Janis’s alternative, and that’s a long way away.”

  “You’ll still have two kids at home.”

  “But Jeremy doesn’t hit it off too well with Bessie, as you may have noticed! And she absolutely adores him, poor pet.”

  Marianne said with a laugh, “That could be why he’s always so rude to her. My grandson too looks pained when Bessie tries to tag along with him and Jeremy.”

  “Sending Jeremy to A.P.’s school was a good idea of yours,” said Laura. “He settled down in this country much more easily than Janis did and it has to be his friendship with A.P. that helped him do so.”

  Though Jeremy was now sixteen, and A.P. a year his junior, they were in the same class and had become inseparable companions.

  “Janis has lots of friends now though,” said Marianne, “and, I gather, plenty of outside interests.”

  “Which Jake and I are hoping won’t result in her getting bad grades in her crucial exams,” said Laura.

  “You don’t take too many assignments away from home any more, do you?” Marianne said after a pause.

  “My family is more important to me,” Laura replied. “And I bet you didn’t think that could happen.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, as a matter of fact. But it has and I’m happy, Marianne.”

  Marianne glanced at one of Laura’s photographic studies that lent additional charm to the spacious, white-walled room. It was one that had won Laura a photographer-of-the-year award, its setting a harbourside on which some fishermen were untangling their silvery catch from the net.

  “I’ve always liked your black and white pictures best,” Marianne said, “and the ones you called throw-outs and let me have, when you and Jake moved house, have been much admired.”

  The town house that David had bought for Laura when Bessie was born could not comfortably accommodate her new family and Jake had found and refurbished their present home, a three-storey Edwardian villa overlooking Hampstead Heath, where property was at a premium, however decaying, and snapped up the moment it came on the market.

  “My mum wanted to make the soup and the knedlach,” Laura said irrelevantly, “but I wouldn’t let her. This is my home and I wanted to cook the meal for the Seder.”

  Before Laura’s marriage, chicken broth and matzo balls had not featured in her preoccupations, thought Marianne. It was as if Jake had waved a wand over her and hey presto! The woman she was had metamorphosed into someone Marianne barely recognized.

  Marianne too had been a devoted wife, and maternity was the strongest emotion she had known until she also became a grandmother. The inner conflict between home and career had dogged her while Martin was growing up, but she could not have brought herself to waste her other gift from God: her talent.

  Laura’s past work was exhibited in galleries worldwide. Now, she was limiting herself to accepting only those commissions unlikely to disrupt her family life. Gone too was the time when she had impulsively taken off for wherever with her camera to give free rein to her creativity, jaunts which had resulted in some of her best work, including the picture that had set Marianne’s mind on this track, taken on a blustery morning in Cornwall.

  On the other side of the room hung a portrait of the man who had changed Laura’s life.

  “I’m surprised that your husband had time to sit for that,” Marianne remarked, eyeing it.

  Laura smiled. “He wasn’t my husband then, and if I hadn’t asked him to we’d have gone on treading our separate paths. My work was instrumental in my finding my man.”

  But could Laura sustain the sacrifice she had resultantly made? It wasn’t for Marianne to dilute the aura of happiness she radiated by warning her that it might not be possible. That sooner or later she could find herself resenting the domestic stricture that was still to her a novelty.

  When Jake and Martin arrived with their sons, Marianne watched Laura’s burly husband greet her with a bear hug that epitomized his warm personality.

  Also, thought Marianne, their relationship. In which affection, not romance, seemed predominant. So much so, Marianne had found herself wondering if Jake was for Laura not just a lover, but the father-figure gone from her life when her dad emigrated to Israel. And the domesticity Laura was now enjoying was perhaps the realization of an ideal-family dream not quite destroyed by her own childhood experience.

  Whatever, long may Laura’s contentment last, Marianne was thinking when her grandson gave her a wink.

  “You’re looking very toffed-up tonight,” he remarked.

  “Come and give me a kiss, you scamp!”

  The kiss delivered, he added with a grin, since it had been necessary for him to stoop, “Am I growing taller, or are you shrinking, Gran?”

  “I haven’t reached the shrinking stage yet, and tall though you are, you’re still not too old for me to spank you!” Marianne replied.

  “First you’d have to catch me.”

  “And my legs certainly aren’t long enough for that. Another disadvantage of your granny being a titch, A.P., is I can’t reach the top shelves of my kitchen cupboards!”

  Bantering with her grandson was one of Marianne’s great pleasures. His dry sense of humour matched her own. What had she said to evoke the serious expression now on his face?

  “Did Granddad used to reach things down for you?” he a
sked quietly.

  “If he happened to be at home when I needed something from up there. When we lived in the cottage in Cheshire, though, the problem didn’t arise.”

  “I remember it having low ceilings.”

  “So it couldn’t have had high cupboards,” said Marianne with a laugh. “But now I’m back in my lofty flat – well, don’t tell your dad, but last week I fell off my ladder while getting down the cast-iron saucepan I use for making carrot and ginger jam for the Passover.”

  “I’m surprised you had the strength to lift the pan,” said A.P.

  “I’m by no means as fragile as I look,” Marianne assured him, “and the special jam is the only culinary achievement I’m known for in the family. This is the first year I won’t be in Manchester to dole out the jars personally, and yesterday I put a carton of jars on the train and called Leona to ask her to collect it and do the distributing for me. I can’t have our relatives up north thinking that my non-appearance at their Seder means I don’t care about them anymore.”

  “What an odd mixture you are!” said her grandson.

  And how astute an observation from a boy of his age, since it was Marianne’s assessment of herself.

  “One day you’re the celebrity doing book-signings and the next you’re putting jars of jam on the train,” he capped it, “like your gran sometimes mailed you a tin of strudel.”

  “Who told you about that?”

  “My dad once said it was the only time he ever got homemade cake.”

  One of Sarah’s many virtues was her thoughtfulness for others, Marianne recalled. Could Marianne credit herself with having inherited that trait? On balance, yes. And it has to be the bits of Sarah I recognize in myself that account for my incongruities of character.

  “I’ve got a jar of the jam in my car, for you and your dad to take home,” she said to A.P.