by Maisie Mosco
The longer you lived, the better you came to understand the quirks of human nature, and the keeping up of appearances essential to some if they themselves were not to fall apart. On the day Shirley’s son was buried, I was as shocked as everyone else to see her dressed like a fashion plate. I had a lot to learn and I still have.
She saw Howard glance at Ann and Kate and put down his cup.
Howard cleared his throat. “There’s something I have to tell you and there’s no time like the present.”
A moment of silence preceded his saying that his father’s death, coupled with his mother’s decision to emigrate to Israel, had resolved a personal dilemma with which he had lived for some time. He then relayed the events of the morning in Munich he would prefer to forget.
“It was like being told straight that there was no way of me being a father to my kid. As if someone had drawn me a picture of his future and I wasn’t in it. On that same day, Karin made it clear that there was no chance of her coming to live with me in England –”
“So you’re now going to live with her in Germany,” Kate cut in, “that’s what you’re telling us, isn’t it?”
“My way of putting it would be that I’m going to where my son and the woman I love are.”
“Which happens to be the country responsible for six million Jews being consigned to their deaths. How could you, Howard!” Kate flashed. “And what about the business Dad devoted most of his life to and left to you?”
Howard gave her a poignant smile. “There was a time when I took the business as seriously as Dad did. But when Ben was taken from me – well, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone to get their priorities straight in the way I was made to. As for how I can bring myself to live in Germany, allow me to tell you that principles and repugnance get set aside when personal happiness is at stake. If you’d rather not visit me, Kate, I’ll come to Israel to see you –”
“Don’t bother,” she replied, rising to stand behind her mother’s chair, her hands on Ann’s shoulders as if forging an alliance with her that bespoke the future.
“You seem to have forgotten that Aryeh’s grandparents were among the six million I mentioned. He wouldn’t have you in the house and nor would I. It was bad enough your marrying a German, but what you intend doing now puts you beyond the pale.”
The colour had drained from Ann’s face as she listened to the makings of a rift between her children. And the pleasure of living with Kate and her family will be side by side with her private distress, Marianne reflected. As Howard’s long overdue happiness would be marred by estrangement from the sister he adored.
Marianne exchanged a glance with Shirley, who had to be thinking, as she was, of their grandmother’s legendary words. Nor was it surprising that Sarah’s long experience of life’s vicissitudes had led her to call them what she had.
Part Three
1987…
Chapter 1
The family was represented at Howard’s wedding by Marianne, Laura, and Jake.
“Not much of a show of loyalty, is it?” said Laura as they journeyed by taxi from Tegel Airport.
It damn well isn’t, thought Marianne. “One just has to accept that for some of us principle won the day,” she said, “and I have to admit it was necessary for me to steel myself to go with Howard to Munich five years ago.”
“If it weren’t that they’re swotting for exams, Jake and I would have brought Janis and Jeremy along to swell the numbers,” said Laura. “What I regret most, though, is that Martin isn’t here to be Howard’s best man.”
“No more so than Martin does.”
“But you don’t say no when you get an out of the blue summons to LA from the producer who sent one to Martin and Andy,” said Jake. “Writing the lyrics and music for a Hollywood spectacular could put them where the West End show Laura and I saw didn’t.”
“That wasn’t because of their contribution to it,” Laura put in. “When the critics predicted the show’s early demise they said with one voice that it was miscast.”
“Given the casting couch legend,” Jake said with a chuckle, “we must hope that whoever the Hollywood producer is currently sleeping with knows how to put a number over.”
“You’re leaping ahead somewhat, Jake!” Marianne said edgily. “There’s a long way to go between Martin and Andy being invited to LA for discussions and their being offered a contract.”
Should the contract be forthcoming, they would then be expected to write the music and lyrics on site, a suite provided for them and the producer breathing down their necks. Martin’s domestic situation was stressful enough without that further strain. Marianne hadn’t expected ever to wish that a step forward in her son’s career would not happen.
If this one did, he would be unable to take A.P. with him to the States. She knew that were it not for Andy, he would not be half-way across the Atlantic now, his lad left with a mother whom therapy had so far failed to help. How, though, could Martin let down the partner who had shared his struggle at the moment when the top seemed attainable?
Marianne had no doubt that by now his priorities had undergone the same painful adjustment that Howard’s had.
“Meanwhile,” said Jake, “a feature of Howard’s wedding will be the last minute stand-ins. He’ll probably ask Karin’s brother to be his best man. And I’ll be honoured to play the part in the ceremony Arnold promised that he would.”
The absence of Arnold and Lyn was due to Matthew’s falling ill. He had complained of dizziness after giving a performance and Pete had insisted on his seeing a doctor. A hospital appointment had followed, and he was now an in-patient undergoing tests.
Nathan too was at present unwell. Which elderly person would recover easily from being mugged in broad daylight outside their own front door, Marianne thought with a surge of anger. Would this be the end of Uncle Nat? Though his bruises had faded he had not yet shaken off the psychological effects, demonstrated by his not since having left the house. Too many senior citizens in this age of violence had similarly retreated with their memories of a world that was for them a safe place.
The taxi-driver interrupted Marianne’s distressing thoughts. “Here is Kurfürstendamm,” he announced, halting at some traffic lights, “where is the beautiful stores and cafés of Berlin.”
“I’d have liked to see the Unter den Linden,” Marianne remarked as the driver turned left into the broad avenue, its pavements thronged, and the buildings at first glance as lacking in character as Prince Charles had pronounced some of their London counterparts to be.
“Unter den Linden,” said the driver regretfully, “is on the East Berlin side of the Wall. My children and my grandchildren, they have never known it otherwise,” he added with a sigh. “But I remember when it was not required to have a visa to drive beneath the Brandenberg Gate. When I and my wife – she was then not yet my wife – would stroll on a Sunday along Unter den Linden, the lime trees all about us, and mingle with the rich in the pavement cafés.”
Such was his nostalgia, his listeners could not but be moved. Not just nostalgia, yearning, Marianne registered.
Resentment replaced it. “Now, we must think ourselves fortunate persons that we are allowed a day pass into East Berlin!” he exclaimed while turning the car into Fasanenstrasse. “My wife she has living there a cousin with whom she has grown up. But her cousin’s children and grandchildren – to them we are the corrupt capitalists…”
The stocky Berliner shook his grizzled head. “Here is Hotel Bristol Kempinski,” he said collecting himself.
He pulled up outside the elegant entrance where a porter had hastened to the kerbside to open the taxi door. Another was sweeping invisible litter from the broad steps, a task that seemed to Marianne out of key with the top hat that was part of their livery.
Laura exchanged a smile with her. “I didn’t stay in such style when I came to Berlin to take pictures. It must have been considered too expensive by the magazine I was taking them for.”
J
ake paid the taxi-driver and remarked as they entered the hotel, “I’m still not comfortable about Karin’s parents paying our hotel bill.”
“Since they insisted we must be their guests, you must accept it with good grace,” Laura replied. “Howard mentioned that the Kempinski has a pool and a gym. The latter could do wonders for your spare tyre, Jake!”
“Would you mind, Laura, if while we’re away from home we took a rest from the subject of losing weight?”
Laura’s smile faded. “I had briefly let myself forget and now you’ve reminded me. We still can’t get Bessie to stop dieting,” she told Marianne while they waited at the reception desk.
Laura’s anxiety on that account was no secret to Marianne, but she kept her tone light. “Bessie is probably afraid of putting the pounds back on, and you must admit she doesn’t qualify to be called Pudge anymore!”
“Jeremy still calls her that, though, and I think he always will. That could be why –”
“If I may just have the last word on the matter,” Jake cut in, “after which I don’t want it raising on this trip again, it isn’t for a kid of Bessie’s age to make her own decisions. You ought not to have allowed it, Laura.”
“I seem to remember your saying to me repeatedly, ‘If she wants to diet, let her!’ And with some force,” Laura retorted.
“By then it was too late. The reason I didn’t interfere at the start was that it could have caused trouble between you and me. Your habit of indulging Bessie’s every whim isn’t how I dealt with Janis and Jeremy.”
“I see.”
Trouble there none the less was, nor had they left it at home, Marianne registered. Had she doubted it, Jake’s tight-lipped expression while he signed the book, and Laura’s hurt silence, would have told her so.
Gliding upward in the sleek lift that epitomized the hotel’s glossy décor, Marianne recalled the afternoon when first Shirley and then Jake had visited her.
Laura’s marriage had since appeared no more prone to ups and downs than any woman might expect. It was plain that she and Jake were still in love – but what did Marianne know of the separate and private feelings of either? Or, indeed, of what went on within their own four walls in their everyday life with their children?
Marianne would not have thought Laura capable of bending her life to accommodate her marriage as she had. A reliable daily housekeeper had replaced the long line of au pairs, and she was continuing to refuse work that would take her out of the country.
She’s now more of a family woman than I ever was or could have been, Marianne reflected. On the surface, that is. The inner Laura, that independent spirit, had to be still there. And there must be times when that person strains at the leash that’s the price of her marrying Jake – whom Shirley had thought was secretly bedding the current au pair.
Anything more out of character would be hard to conceive, and the mystery of Laura’s suddenly firing Ingrid was eventually solved for Marianne by Janis, in a conversation on the theme of justice.
Janis had cited Ingrid’s fate as an example of injustice. “My dad caught her bringing her boyfriend into the house when she thought we were all asleep. Letting him in, actually. But if Dad weren’t such a killjoy, she could’ve done it openly, like her friend was allowed to. Dad’s making Laura fire her wasn’t fair.”
Since Jake wasn’t what Janis called a “killjoy” towards the world at large, his reason was clear. He would not have that example set to his daughter in his own home, thought Marianne, eyeing him as they stepped out of the lift. And it was fortunate for Janis that she herself apparently qualified for the description “an old-fashioned girl”.
The porter led them along a thickly carpeted corridor to the two lavish and interconnecting suites reserved for them by Karin’s parents.
Alone in hers, Marianne could not but be aware of her solitary state. Nor that she hadn’t forgotten the man she encountered at her brother’s dinner-party. A brief encounter was all it had been – and she would rather not think of the impression of her he had doubtless carried away with him.
She had unpacked and was combing her hair when Laura knocked on the door and entered, eating a peach from the fruit basket provided with the compliments of the hotel management.
“Did your outfit for the wedding get crushed, Marianne? Mine would have if it hadn’t been Jake who did the packing! I’ve never shed the habit acquired in my roving days of just stuffing whatever into a bag ten minutes before taking off.”
Some small talk followed, then Laura said after a pause, “You didn’t do much travelling without Ralph, did you? I expect you’re missing him right now.”
“I still haven’t got used to being alone, if that’s what you mean,” Marianne replied. “I doubt that a woman widowed after many years ever does. But if you want the truth, I don’t miss marriage.”
“You wouldn’t consider marrying again?”
Marianne laughed. “Like my mother used to say – though not in that context – it’s manners to wait till you’re asked.”
“But should you meet the right man –”
“Another of my mum’s favourite sayings was that well-known cliché about crossing a bridge when you come to it. And still another, which could be more to the point, is not to meet trouble half-way!”
“I didn’t imagine that your marital relationship was trouble-free,” said Laura, “whose is? But essentially you and Ralph were happy together, weren’t you?”
“That doesn’t mean that at my age and stage I would lightly let myself in for sharing my life with a man again.”
“There’s something familiar about this conversation.”
“It’s more or less a repeat of one we had years ago,” Marianne told her dryly, “but then it was me talking to you like a Dutch auntie. We’ve switched places, Laura, and I must say I find it amusing. You’d like me to settle down. But I’m not exactly having a rave-up!”
Jake then came to suggest that they go for a stroll on the Kurfürstendamm.
“I called Karin and Howard to let them know we’ve arrived,” he added, “and Karin’s parents have invited us for dinner this evening. She mentioned that the Café Kranzler is where the smart Berliners go for coffee and pastries in the afternoon – and you know me for pastries, Laura!”
“If only Bessie was still saying that.”
“Stop it, will you?”
Again the note of strife Marianne had detected earlier was briefly in the air.
Laura dispelled it with a self-deprecatory laugh. “Who’d have thought I would turn into a mother hen?”
“Not me,” said Marianne, “but I’d say that most women have that potential. I’ve never considered myself one, but I have to bite my tongue when I see Martin out without a coat in winter! Remind myself that a grown man would take even less kindly to maternal supervision than he did as a child.”
She donned her red leather jacket and slung her bag on her shoulder. “Shall we go and mingle with the Berliners, as Jake suggested?”
Avid observer though she was, Marianne could find no pleasure in this trip. Nor was the reason solely repugnance attached to the past, she reflected while Laura and Jake went to put on their coats. There was no shortage in the present of reminders of that past, and not just in Germany.
In Britain the National Front had a new and well-educated young leadership said to have initiated a long-term plan to infiltrate every walk of life. It was no longer just a matter of mindless thugs marching and doing their worst in the streets.
Marianne switched her mind to matters less disturbing and went to join Laura and Jake in their suite.
When they had been bowed from the hotel – such was the handsome young porter’s deference – Marianne recalled Howard’s mentioning that the Berlin Jewish Community Centre was also situated on Fasanenstrasse and suggested that they take a look at it before going to gorge themselves on pastries.
Where the Centre now stood was once a synagogue burned down by the Nazis in 1938. In the fo
recourt were some surviving fragments, left as a reminder.
Jake pointed silently to a grey concrete wall, on which was a memorial tablet bearing the Star of David. Momentarily none of them was capable of speech, nor were they when they entered the building and saw in the columned hall inscribed in bronze the names of the concentration camps.
Marianne could see from where she stood a library in which several young people were seated at tables as if studying. Some small children passed by in a group escorted by a girl who was possibly their teacher – which meant there was perhaps a kindergarten in the building.
When they left and were heading towards Kurfürstendamm, she suddenly registered the absence of guards and remarked upon it.
“It’s possible they’re placed out of sight,” Jake opined, “since I can’t imagine them not being required here.”
“What I can’t imagine,” said Laura, “is having to see that inscription in the hall each time I went there – if I lived in Berlin, I mean.”
“Those who do, though, will long ago have stopped noticing it,” said Jake. “They couldn’t live with that in the forefront of their minds all the time.”
Before they had reached the street corner, a reedy-looking youth drew abreast of them and was about to stride on when Marianne addressed him.
“Excuse me – didn’t I see you in the library at the Centre?”
He slowed his pace and smiled politely. “I also saw you. It is not unusual for the Jewish tourists who keep kosher to make use of the restaurant upstairs.”
“We just dropped in to have a look at the place,” she told him.
“And what, if I may ask, was your impression?”
“As Jewish community centres go, I found it somewhat posh,” she answered with a laugh.
“Posh?”
“Well, let me put it to you this way,” said Jake. “I’m from South Africa, though I now live in England. I also do a lot of travelling and few of the centres I’ve seen could be called show-pieces.”