by Maisie Mosco
“May we get back to Moira?”
“She now attends group therapy sessions, though it goes against the grain for a private person like her. I can’t imagine Moira loosening up and discussing her deepest feelings with others.”
“Perhaps her psychoanalyst thinks that’s what she needs,” said Marianne. “Is she still seeing him?”
“He sits in on the group. Moira says everyone – including her – screams and shouts at each other when someone says something that riles them. It seems she was rattling on about her marriage being ruined by her Jewish in-laws –”
“She didn’t put it quite that way when I took her to lunch.”
“Pulling strings behind my back, were you?” Martin said with a weary smile. “Thanks for trying, Mum.”
“If Moira was able to tell you what you’ve just told me, I’d have thought that boded well for your relationship, that it indicated the possibility of a new understanding,” Marianne said, allowing herself some hope.
Martin dashed it to the ground. “All Moira tells me is bits and bobs and they’re never about her own contribution to the action. I got that information from Bill Dryden, who keeps me posted. Moira sees a lot of him and Sukey, and I’m immensely grateful to both of them.
“As you may remember, I had no option but to pretend ignorance of Moira’s undergoing therapy. It wasn’t until she switched to the group kind that she herself put me in the picture. It was then necessary for me to feign surprise. There’ve been times, Mum, when I’ve had cause to think I’d have made a good actor.”
And how hard it must have been for Marianne’s open and honest son to live the lengthy lie he had. The older he grew the more he looked like his father, but Ralph’s hair hadn’t turned grey before he was forty.
“To complete the information Bill gave me,” he went on, “after Moira said what she did about our family, one of the others accused her of having a guilt complex because she’d married out of her religion, and of blaming us for what she’d done.”
Marianne said wryly, “It strikes me that participating in group therapy could turn one into an amateur psychoanalyst.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Martin, “since learning to understand what ails yourself must surely lead to your delving into the behaviour of others. I imagine that’s what the participants are encouraged to do, that it helps to put their personal problems into perspective.”
“Did Bill say that Moira accepts the accusation hurled at her as the truth?”
“It’s still early days for that, Mum. But looking back, I’d say she’s lived with guilt on that account since our wedding day. If we’d married in church, things might have been different for her, but that she didn’t ask of me. It seems to me now that her excessive devoutness is her way of trying to make amends for her marriage not being sanctified.”
Marianne said after a pause, “But you haven’t lived with guilt because you married out, have you?”
“Perhaps because you relieved me of it, by giving me your blessing. Moira never got that from her father and he’s the one who counts in that family. Nor, needless to say, did she get it from her great-uncle now a cardinal and not the first of the Kyverdales to wield that power. He wasn’t at our wedding, of course, and that could’ve been when what she had done first hit Moira.”
“And you think how she feels towards our family is all tied up with her guilt?”
“It has to be.”
“Not necessarily. From what she said when we lunched together, it was plain that she finds us overwhelming and pathologically so. She didn’t put it in the words I’m using, but my impression then was that Moira had to retreat lest we soak her up. It made me re-think the tragedy of Howard’s first marriage –”
“Are you saying the family had that effect on Christina, too?”
“Well, I do think that we over-simplified that situation. Christina too was an outsider, and too much in love with Howard to have considered the built-in hazards to her marrying a Jew. Confronted with his family – well, she said it all in the note she left Howard when she’d had enough, didn’t she? That she couldn’t go on feeling herself the enemy in the camp.”
“That’s the direct opposite of your soaking up theory,” said Martin.
“It’s nevertheless something we did to her en masse,” Marianne replied. “One way or another I wouldn’t say that marrying into a clan like ours was something anyone of a different persuasion would find immediately comfortable. Your dad didn’t know what had hit him!”
“But he got used to it, didn’t he? I would say it depends upon the person. How long did it take Lyn to feel herself one of us?”
“I wouldn’t know. I used to think her something of a chameleon, before she proved herself incapable of playing Lady Klein. Not only does she feel she’s one of us, we feel that way about her. But in the light of more recent experience – Moira is a graphic example – I have to conclude that neither having a family of their own contributed to Lyn and your dad each finding their place in ours.”
“May we add to that,” said Martin, “the religious factor I still hold responsible, despite what you’ve been saying? Unlike Lyn and Dad, Moira’s background has the strong pull that ours exerts upon us. I was never more conscious of the grip it has on me than on the night I asked you if you’d mind your grandchildren not being Jewish. In a lesser way I am still occasionally prey to it when consuming a ham sandwich. It will be with me till the day I die.
“The difference between Moira and me, though – between Moira and most people – is that I’m capable of shrugging off my sins and she isn’t. I’d go so far as to say that she’ll never rid herself of her guilt without ridding herself of me. That, however, she is about to do, and with my full compliance.”
Martin reached for an apple and bit into it, as his son had at Marianne’s table so often, while his parents’ marriage dragged on in the private hell it had to have been for both of them.
“Does A.P. know yet that his mum and dad are splitting up?”
“It was he who told us that we should.”
“Adding, no doubt, that he’d had his fill of the pair of you!”
“If he’d said that, I wouldn’t blame him,” Martin replied, “and could be what’s helped him to survive in one piece is his having you to come to. All he said, though, was that when he goes off to college, in October, there’d be no reason for his parents to stay married. Moira told him she agreed, and I said it was a sensible suggestion.”
“Fortunately for that lad,” said Marianne, “he is not only sensible, but also philosophical.”
But what a way to end a marriage! Clinical was the word for it, and their child the instigator of what he knew was best for them.
“Well, he’s your grandson, isn’t he?” Martin answered dryly. “He wanted to be the one to tell you, but I drew the line at that.”
“When are he and Jeremy leaving on their travels?”
“Europe on a shoestring, you mean! What I wouldn’t give to re-live that time in my own life. Someone once remarked to me that youth goes unappreciated by the young. With the benefit of hindsight I had to agree. And before you know it, you’re looking back on it,” Martin added.
Marianne sensed the motley emotion churning within him. How wouldn’t it, now he and Moira had finally called it quits? And gone forever was the breathless quality of dreams as yet unrealized with which he had hand in hand set forth with her.
Never was there a truer example of someone little by little having the stars knocked from their eyes than Marianne’s son. Like his father, Martin was a romantic. It was there in the lyrics he wrote and had helped, together with Andy’s music, to achieve the popular success their partnership had accrued.
“I haven’t yet heard that new song of yours that’s doing so well in the charts,” she said to him.
“It isn’t one of our usual boy-meets-girl ballads, Mum. I sat down one night and wrote some lyrics about a guy getting screwed by life – and felt like calling t
he song ‘Poor Martin’! Andy was reluctant to set them to music. Now, he thinks like I do that this could be a turning point for us. Since it hit the charts, our producer’s been seeing it that way, too. Cynicism, it seems, is a highly marketable product. Given my own experience, I ought not to be surprised.”
“On a personal level, though, it can be highly erosive,” Marianne answered. “Do your mother a favour, love, try not to let your experience erode your future –”
“On a personal level I don’t seem to have one.”
Marianne put her hand on his.
“Please don’t get sentimental on me,” he said with a shaky laugh. “Right now, it wouldn’t take much to reduce me to sobs! On the way round here, I was thinking of you and Dad. How you had your tiffs but went on loving each other. But for Moira and me – well, it was as if we both just watched what we’d once had slowly disintegrate and knew there was nothing we could do about it.
“Even with the will to do so, we couldn’t put our marriage back together. There is literally nothing left.”
“But something good came of it for both of you,” said Marianne, “for me, too. Your son. Please tell him that his being discreet about his gran having a boyfriend needn’t include not dropping in here to be given some extra pocket-money for his trip to Europe.”
Marianne’s jocularity helped revive Martin’s spirits. “I’ll suggest that he phones you to fix a suitable time,” he replied in similar vein. “The last thing he’d want would be to interrupt a tête-à-tête breakfast –”
Marianne tried not to blush but again found herself doing so.
“I was joking, Mum!”
“My love affair isn’t a joke to me.”
“Then why not let the guy make an honest woman of you?”
“If and when a proposal is put to me, the honest woman I am and have always been will have to deal with her own uncertainty on the subject.”
Marianne reverted to the one from which they had digressed. “Howard told me on the phone that A.P. and Jeremy will be spending some time with him and Karin, in Munich.”
“They’ve also been offered hospitality by Karin’s parents when they get to Berlin. And Henry Moritz told Frank to let them know they’d be welcome to sleep on his living-room floor, in Paris.”
“Given Henry’s couldn’t-care-less approach to all but political causes, they will probably have to sweep the floor, first!”
“You’ve never approved of Henry, have you?”
Marianne got up to make them each another mug of tea. “It isn’t for me to approve or disapprove. Like you said to me about mine, his life is his own – and in Henry’s case that couldn’t be more true. For me, Henry epitomizes the proverbial rolling stone gathering no moss, and I find that rather sad. I don’t doubt that he’s accumulated some of the scars nobody can hope to escape, but for most of us living also provides the simple human pleasures Henry hasn’t known since he put the mundane behind him and set forth on his endless banner carrying.”
“If by the mundane you mean his hometown,” said Martin, “Henry’s in Manchester at the moment. A.P. called Leona to get his Paris phone number, and it was Henry who picked up the receiver.”
“Let me remind you,” said Marianne, “that Manchester is also my hometown, and I have never thought it mundane. The place I grew up in isn’t there any more, changed out of recognition by what passes nowadays for architecture and planning. Prince Charles is giving some of those responsible the rebuke they deserve, in my opinion, for what’s been done to some of Britain’s cities, Manchester included!”
“Calm down and make the tea, Mum!”
“Why I’m het up is part of what I had started telling you. Despite the many years I’ve lived in London, at heart I’ve remained a Mancunian. And there’s still the throb of life in Manchester that there always was, Martin. Mundane indeed! It’s people who make the atmosphere of a city, and those like you, who’ve never lived up north, don’t know what they’ve missed.”
“I think what you’re talking about, Mum, is how everyone feels about the place they were raised in.”
“Probably. If the family hadn’t driven me to it, I’d never have left the north again.”
“Nor would you have met Simon Newman.”
Marianne let that pass.
“Did you know that Frank’s been suffering from work stress?”
“No, but I know now! Who passed that titbit on to you?”
“I think it was Laura, when I last spoke to her.”
“Did it ever strike you, Martin, that absolutely nothing happens in our family without the lot of us getting to know about it?”
“You do seem to have a down on the family tonight!”
Marianne added milk to the tea and returned with the mugs to the table. “What I’m coming to have a down on, Martin, is the institution a family is. Look what it did to Howard’s first marriage. Not to mention its effect upon yours. I may as well tell you now that I’ve been protecting my love affair from the family. And in a way I envy Henry. What but the family did he turn his back on, to live his own life?”
“Since I’m part of what you’re protecting your affair from, forgive me for feeling hurt,” said her son. “Why don’t you and Simon Newman pack up your typewriters and go and live on a desert island?”
“Nature didn’t equip me with Henry’s self-absorption,” Marianne replied. “And what’s the betting he’s in Manchester to collect yet another handout from his twin?”
“Frank isn’t there, Leona told A.P. after he’d spoken to Henry. He’s taking a break in the Lake District.”
“If Henry had known that, he wouldn’t have wasted money on flying to Manchester,” said Marianne. “Leona probably added to his disappointment by telling him it served him right for never letting them know he’s coming. And he won’t get a penny out of her. She hates his guts.”
“Well, he was the one she wanted, but he didn’t want her, did he?”
Marianne put down her mug. “How did you know that?”
“How did you know Henry gets handouts from Frank? Like you said, there are seemingly no secrets in our family and that includes family history. I thought you were telling me one when you revealed to me nearly twenty years ago that you and my father had to get married –”
“I didn’t put it that way.”
“How you put it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the disgrace in my day that it was in yours. And I knew you loved each other. What does matter is it’s something private that my mother told me, and I’ve never repeated it to a soul – not even to Moira. It strikes me now, though, that all this time the whole bloody family has to have known, but carefully kept their knowledge from me!”
Martin got up and kissed Marianne’s cheek. “I was hurt by what you said about protecting your love affair, Mum. But I owe you an apology. I’m beginning to see what you mean.”
“But let’s not forget the other side of the coin. When your dad died – well, the first few weeks were the worst, needless to say, and I wasn’t left to grieve on my own twenty-four hours a day. You know how I feel about Shirley, but she would sometimes turn up out of the blue – never without one of her fancy gateaux! – and I was glad to see her.
“It was the same with Ann and Leona. I’d hear a car pull up outside the cottage and a minute later one or the other of them was walking up the path. And I was never without visitors in the evenings. Everyone rallied round me, like we’re all doing with Matthew now.”
Martin watched the driving rain lashing the window and smiled sourly. “If there were no redeeming features to the institution we’re discussing, it would have capsized long ago.”
“In some families, be they Jewish or gentile, that has begun happening,” Marianne replied, “given the times we’re living in. And despite all I’ve said on the subject, I’m thankful that ours hasn’t changed, that the blood tie still means something to us and has kept us from going our separate ways.”
Chapter 8
Bessie�
��s childish secrets too were destined to remain private no longer. Jake came upon her improvised diary while searching in her room for a magazine she had borrowed from Laura.
By then Nathan had proved himself to be the miracle worker Laura had wryly mentioned.
Bessie’s wanting to borrow the magazine, indicative of her renewed interest in anything other than herself, had together with other signs of her progress seemed nothing short of miraculous to her parents.
Nathan had stayed with the family for two weeks, during which he had succeeded in establishing a close rapport with Bessie, asking her to be kind enough to show an old gentleman the local sights, and in her parents’ presence exchanging winks with her, as if the two of them shared in-jokes.
On the day Nathan left, Laura was the recipient of a lecture, if not of the ticking off she had anticipated.
“There is more than one kind of insecurity,” he had informed her. “Some folk, kids included, have a greater need than others to feel loved. Unlike Janis and Jeremy, Bessie is unable to take for granted that being one of a family guarantees affection from one to another.
“Let me give you an example, Laura. There were ways in which I felt myself put through the mill by your grandfather, my brother, David. But I never doubted that he loved me –”
“Nobody in this house has ever put Bessie through the mill,” Laura had interrupted.
“But all families indulge in everyday squabbles, afterwards forgotten. Not by Bessie, though. Instead she questions if whoever said the sharp word really loves her. I’m not suggesting that you all begin handling Bessie with kid gloves. There’s been too much of that already since she did what she did to capture the special attention she craves.
“There are other ways of giving that to her, and she needs it from you especially. When did you last spend time alone with her? Take her out for an evening, or an afternoon, just the two of you? Let her know that she’s still your little girl, like always, despite your now having two other children? The way a sensible mother would with her elder child after giving birth to a second?