by Maisie Mosco
Little by little, marriage to Shirley had diminished his spirit. Nor could working beside his high-powered wife in the family business have failed to emasculate him. But a trip to Israel had served as Peter’s salvation. There he had encountered Hildegard, with whom in their youth he had walked hand-in-hand from the ship at Dover, and he was now married to her.
Peter’s was one family story that had ended happily, Marianne thought wryly as the doorbell pealed.
But not for Shirley – whose outrageous conclusion that Jake was having it off with the au pair had surpassed even Marianne’s estimation of her cousin’s nasty mind.
That isn’t to say his wanting to talk to me privately hasn’t got me worried. She went to let him in. And this had been the sort of day that drove her from her native north. Family taking precedence. She had barely done a stroke of work.
“Thanks for seeing me, Marianne. I know how busy you are.”
That was what they all said. North and south. As if Marianne’s sparing time for her relatives was bestowing a favour. It wasn’t like that at all. Simply that publishing was no longer the leisurely ethos many supposed it still to be, but a highly commercial operation that began with the author.
Marianne’s not meeting her deadline could be likened to the vital component in a machine going missing. If every author on a publisher’s list failed to deliver, the machine would grind to a halt. As for one’s creativity – if someone rang up while you were composing a passage not yet down on paper, by the time you’d snarled, “I can’t talk now!” and replaced the receiver the passage you’d been mentally writing had disintegrated never to return.
“I expect you’re pretty busy yourself,” she replied to Jake, while he hung his coat on the battered old coat-tree that Ralph had bought in a junk shop, years ago.
“And I’ll be off on another of my trips, soon,” he said as they went into the living-room.
Where Shirley’s habitual Chanel No. 5 scent still lingered in the air. Would Jake notice it? A thought that brought home to Marianne the two-way deception in which she suddenly found herself enmeshed.
She offered Jake some sherry and said while she was pouring it, “I have to tell you I’ve been wondering what you could possibly want to discuss privately with me. Since neither your wedding anniversary, nor Laura’s birthday, is looming up, you haven’t come to consult me about what to give her!”
“If only it were something like that, Marianne,” he said as she handed him a brimming glass.
“You look as if you need a whisky, but I haven’t any. And if you’re going to tell me that things have gone wrong between you and Laura, I’m not going to believe it.”
Marianne had not, until today, seen him clad for the office. The business suit he had on, and his dark silk tie, made him look older than he appeared in casual clothes. And an incongruous husband for the woman Laura really was.
Jake sipped some sherry and tried to smile. It had never been easy for him to share his problems, nor was he accustomed to having to do so.
“This morning Laura and I had our first quarrel,” he said eventually. “There was something she wanted to handle her way and I insisted on it being dealt with my way.”
The au pair had evidently erred in some manner or other, and Marianne could imagine Laura wanting to give the girl the benefit of the doubt. Jake, though, was a man of quick decisions in all his dealings. To achieve what he had he would have to be. And so much for Shirley’s supposition!
“Does the quarrel you mentioned concern what you want to discuss with me?” she asked him.
“Directly, no. Indirectly, yes.”
Marianne put down her glass. “If you’re going to talk to me in double-Dutch, Jake, I must tell you I’d much prefer plain English.”
“But this isn’t a simple, black and white matter, Marianne. Well, not for me. I’m worried about Laura.” He paused before adding, “I’ve also learned that she has a mind of her own.”
“How long did it take you to find that out?”
“I suspected it before I married her –”
“Suspected it? You’re making a woman’s having a mind of her own sound like a criminal trait in her character! In the eighties, there are few women who don’t and why the heck shouldn’t they have?”
“In principle I agree. But in practice – well, I expect that Laura also had her suspicions about me. That I’m the kind she now knows I am. On the whole, she doesn’t seem to be having the trouble coping with me that I’m having coping with her. And frankly – well, I’m dreading the time when Janis tells us she intends living with a boyfriend, and I say, ‘The hell you do!’ and Laura sides with Janis.”
“Has Janis got a steady boyfriend?”
“No, but I can see it coming.”
Jake finished his sherry and Marianne refilled his glass, trying to make sense of the man he said he was having married a single woman with a child.
“I forgave Laura for stepping off the straight and narrow once,” he said as if he had divined Marianne’s thoughts, “since she did it in order to be a mother. And I adore Bessie.”
Once? As for others of her generation, sleeping with whomever you fancied before settling down had been for Laura the norm, and she would be the opposite of censorious if her and Jake’s children did what was increasingly the norm. The main preoccupation of many parents of teenage daughters, nowadays, was to make sure they were on the pill.
Jake, though, was as if set in amber. What was Laura doing married to this nice kind man who was in some respects a throwback to the Victorian husband and father? And of course Laura had suspected it! Why else had she kept her randy past to herself?
There was, however, no such thing as starting out with a clean slate, whatever the venture. What you thought you had put behind you was liable to reappear unexpectedly before you, and down you went.
And when the venture was marriage…
Jake finally got around to telling Marianne the reason for his visit. “I want Laura to see a gynaecologist, but she’s refused to do so.” He paused before saying, “You see, we’ve been trying to have a child –”
“Laura’s age could account for her not conceiving,” Marianne replied.
“That’s what I keep telling her, and that there could be treatment available. The only answer I get from her, Marianne, is that her not getting pregnant is God’s will.”
To Marianne, that sounded like Sarah Sandberg. It certainly wasn’t Laura.
“Look – there’s something I’d better add,” said Jake. “If we don’t have a child together it won’t be the end of the world to me. What would, is if Laura’s age didn’t account for it. The reason I want her to get a check-up is if something is seriously wrong with her, the sooner it’s dealt with the better.”
Jake got up to gaze through the window and Marianne sensed that he did not want her to see his expression. There was too in his final words something that bespoke a painful significance for him.
The late afternoon had slipped into twilight, but Marianne could not bring herself to switch on the lamps, such was the atmosphere.
It was she who broke the silence. “If you want me to talk sense to Laura, Jake, I will. But that would require my telling her that you’ve confided in me.”
He turned and said, his heart in his voice, “Marianne, I don’t give a damn what you have to tell her. All I’m concerned with is trying to ensure that she doesn’t die on me –”
After Jake’s departure, Marianne made herself some tea and a cheese sandwich, and took her frugal supper into her study. More frugal than usual, since it was matzo, not bread.
She could not but be troubled by what she had learned and on more than one count. Laura was very dear to her. More like the daughter denied to Marianne than a young cousin.
Nor would she wish on Laura her own experience of trying to have another child. The waiting between one operation and the next. The anxiety. And the final loss of hope.
Though the treatment of infer
tility nowadays could not be compared to that before new ground was broken, the accompanying tension until you knew, one way or the other, had to be the same. And meanwhile your life revolved around it. Your husband’s too, but not twenty-four hours a day. It was your body not his upon which all was centred.
Like birth itself, when even if he was there beside you as modern husbands chose to be, he could not share with you what giving birth meant to a woman.
Marianne’s reading of Jake was that he would not choose to be there. But that didn’t mean that Laura wasn’t precious to him. On the contrary, fear of losing her seemed to be obsessing him. Had another man said what he finally did, Marianne would have told him not to be melodramatic. The emotion Jake had displayed could not be mistaken for melodrama.
She ate some of her sandwich, pondering upon what his relationship with his first wife might have been. Had she perhaps neglected the early symptoms of her illness and Jake been less insistent than he was being with Laura? From what Marianne had learned from Janis and Jeremy, their mother was a bright woman. Whom they had never heard quarrel with their father, Janis had revealed, which could mean she was of that ilk able to manipulate her husband without his realizing it.
Unlike Laura, who shared with Marianne the directness some found unwelcome, a characteristic difficult to restrain. But that wasn’t the only reason Laura was having trouble playing the role in which Jake had cast her.
Marianne recalled the dishevelled teenager who years ago had hitch-hiked to London – and presented herself on my doorstep!
As the leopard does not change its spots, nor had the essence of that girl, now a woman, changed. What we are is what we remain, thought Marianne. Only the shell that houses the person is transformable.
“You look as if you need a bath!” Ralph had said to Laura that night. “When you’ve had one we’ll talk while you have something to eat.”
Or words to that effect and Laura had done as she was bid without argument. So it had continued. In the Deans’ easy household the free spirit she was had blossomed. But Marianne feared that her love for Jake had caused her to return the genie to the bottle.
What was her row with Jake this morning if not the cork blowing?
Hard though it was to do so, Marianne switched her mind to her work. She had intended watching a TV documentary, but with so much time lost today…
The interruptions, however, were not yet over. The doorbell rang.
But what a welcome visitor this was. “A.P. What a lovely surprise!”
“Got any cornflakes, Gran? I’ve had my meal, but I’m feeling a bit peckish.”
“Cornflakes don’t get eaten in my home on the Passover,” she replied with a smile, “but you’re welcome to matzo and jam.”
“Your special ginger jam?”
“None other. You’re exactly like your dad was at your age,” Marianne told him en route to the kitchen. “Cereal was never just breakfast food to him. No matter how big a dinner he’d eaten, half-an-hour later I’d find him scoffing a big bowl of what he used to call ‘the necessary’. When we visited the family up north, though, and there was meat for dinner, he was made to wait the number of hours orthodox Jews are required to before afterwards consuming dairy foods.”
“How very inconvenient,” said A.P. “Was that why you joined a Reform synagogue, Gran?”
“Well, let’s just say the modern form of Judaism removes the necessity for me to feel guilty. Some who are nominally orthodox and show contempt for Reform think nothing of driving on the Sabbath, if they’re invited to a Bar Mitzvah at a synagogue not within walking distance. I used to do it myself and park my car where it wouldn’t be seen, along with the rest, and it made me feel a hypocrite.”
“I expect I’d feel like you once did if I secretly ate meat on a Friday,” said her grandson, reminding her he was a Catholic. “And my dad still calls cereal ‘the necessary’. We sometimes sit in the kitchen feeding our faces while Mum’s in the living-room immersed in a book. That’s when we have our chats.”
Though the closeness between Martin and his son was a warming thought for Marianne, it was tempered by the knowledge of their alliance against Moira.
Moira’s having brought the situation upon herself made matters no easier. She must surely know that A.P.’s increasing involvement with his father’s family had not caused his Catholicism to falter. Marianne had come to realize that what Moira feared was the family itself.
And the more A.P. comes towards us, the further Moira retreats from us, she reflected, watching the boy spread butter and jam on yet another piece of matzo. Marianne could not recall the last time she had seen her daughter-in-law. Pressure of work is sometimes a useful excuse, though I’ve never employed it with Moira.
“May I have an apple, too, Gran?”
Marianne’s reply was the one that she and Shirley had years ago received from Sarah Sandberg, when they asked permission to help themselves to fruit from the bowl on her table.
“Have whatever you like. This is your second home.”
“Do you really mean that, Gran?”
“You should know by now, A.P., that I don’t say what I don’t mean.”
“I was just making double-sure.”
“Is it that important to you?”
Marianne scanned his expression, aware that he was thinking carefully before replying. Keeping her waiting like Ralph used to do when they were discussing something that mattered. An attribute that skipped a generation, since Martin like me is inclined to rush in where angels fear to tread.
Only once had he notably not done so. On the sultry evening that heralded the end of the baking hot summer that took Britain by surprise in 1969.
Marianne had spent the day preparing food for one of the dinner-parties Ralph’s new business venture obliged her to give. I was laying the table on the patio when Martin suddenly appeared at my side. She could still see the insects buzzing around the lamps and the rose bushes like spectres in the dusk, their perfume lending sweetness to the humid air. I had to slap Martin’s hand to stop him from making short work of the cocktail snacks awaiting the guests on the outdoor bar Ralph had rigged up.
A year had passed since Martin came down from Oxford and met Moira, and Marianne had with mixed feelings watched her son head towards the dilemma with which she herself was faced at his age.
His unexpected arrival that evening was due to his not having been invited to Lord Kyverdale’s birthday party and Marianne re-lived the indignation that had gripped her then. But wasn’t it like that for Moira with our family? Not for them nor for us was there any chance that the outsider would convert. As things turned out, though, it was necessary for both families to let the outsider in.
For Martin that evening was his moment of decision and he had asked Marianne how she would feel if her grandchildren were baptized. She had known that if she told him it would break her heart, he would not marry the girl he loved. Instead she had said that what she wanted was for him to be happy.
Sixteen years later, all the evidence was to the contrary. She watched her grandson take an apple from the fruit bowl and bite into it, his expression thoughtful.
“About what you asked me, Gran –”
“Would you mind reminding me what it was?”
“I did take rather a long time to answer, didn’t I? You wanted to know if it’s important to me for this to be my second home. Well, it’s like this, Gran. I often feel like coming here, but everyone knows about you and your work. If this is my second home, though, I needn’t take that into account.”
“That’s excellent reasoning, A.P. I’ll let you have a key and then you can come whenever you like, and if I’m working it won’t interrupt me. You have my permission to tiptoe into my study to bring me a mug of tea!”
“A sensible arrangement if I may say so, Gran. When can I have the key?”
Marianne did not know whether to laugh, or to cry, but of course she did neither. Had he still been a small child, she would have t
aken him on her lap for a cuddle. That there were times when the lad needed somewhere and someone to run to was plain. Given the strife in his home, it wasn’t surprising.
She fetched her bunch of keys from the Welsh dresser drawer. “Without my glasses, and I’ve left them in the study, I can’t tell which key is which, A.P. As you can see, they all have tags labelling them.”
“Are your spare burglar alarm keys among them?”
“Where else would I keep them?”
“Where they’re not labelled and waiting for burglars to find them. They could then switch off the bell and your neighbours would think it a false alarm. The flat could be emptied before you got back, and your study vandalized, including the manuscript you’re working on being torn to shreds. Really, Gran!”
A.P. paused only for breath. “And at night they’d have time to club you on the head in your bed before leaving, to stop you from phoning the police.”
“What a horrific imagination you have, A.P.”
“Imagination is how I’d like it to stay. I shouldn’t think Granddad took the risks you take.”
“He was security mad, love. I have neither time nor patience to be. When I think how people, when I was young, didn’t bother locking their doors – well, I ask myself how did we get from that to this.”
“What you just said, Gran, includes that you’re not young any more. And it seems to me that you need watching over.”
“I am not yet in my dotage, A.P.!”
“But you don’t bother taking care of yourself, do you?”
Perhaps, thought Marianne, because there was always someone who took care of me. Poignancy, though, made this sermon from her grandson none the less amusing.
“That’s why I came here tonight,” he went on. “I decided that the only way to make sure you don’t fall off a ladder is to transfer what’s on your top shelves to the lower ones. That bunch of keys must be dealt with, too.”