by Maisie Mosco
“I don’t doubt you’d have done that, Laura, if your family had been increased in the usual way.”
“It wasn’t though, was it? If I’d done what you think I should have –”
“I understand – don’t think I’ve failed to. It might have occurred to you, nevertheless, had you thought about it, that Janis and Jeremy had each other. What you couldn’t have known, but events have proved it, is that Bessie is less resilient than they are. She has felt it necessary to live up to them in her mother’s estimation, to Janis in particular.”
“Did she say so?”
“Not in so many words, but those are my findings for what they’re worth. I’ve made a bargain with her, and there’s nothing left for me to do. The rest is up to you.”
“What was the bargain?”
“If you follow the advice implicit in what I’ve said to you, and your having a word about it with Jake and his kids wouldn’t come amiss, you’ll find out.”
Laura had begun by inviting Bessie to lunch with her at the restaurant in Regent’s Park Zoo, expecting her daughter’s reply to be a reminder that she was dieting. Instead, the invitation was accepted, and the child had done her best to eat something.
Afterwards they had fed buns to the animals, a somewhat poignant exercise for Laura given the circumstances.
It would be some time before Bessie was able to enjoy and digest a normal diet, but she was receiving affectionate encouragement from her family, a more positive form of attention than her self-inflicted starvation had commanded, and at her own request was no longer seeing the psychoanalyst.
The summer vacation period over, she had now returned to school, but Laura had continued to set aside time for her. On Saturday mornings they shopped for this, or that, in Hampstead High Street together and lunched at one of the cafés where other little girls were to be seen with their mothers.
Bessie was now taking an interest in clothes too, and today Laura had bought her a new outfit from the children’s boutique on Heath Street. Her weight was not yet such to fill out the garments her height required, but it was still early days and Laura was right now a far happier mum, she reflected gratefully on the evening her peace was due for a battering again.
Nathan had kept in touch by telephone and had said that displaying trust in Bessie was now essential to ensure there would not be a setback. If the child thought that gorging and afterwards making herself vomit was still what her parents expected she might do, it would damage the self-confidence she was gradually building.
She had recently been allowed to resume outings without supervision and was now, wearing her new outfit, at her friend Val’s birthday party. Though some of the little girls she knew had eschewed the company of an unsightly anorexic, Val’s had remained steadfast and theirs seemed to Laura a friendship likely to endure throughout their lives.
Like mine with Peggy Morris, she thought. Peggy alone of all my old pals in Manchester didn’t cut me off when I became an unmarried mum. Some of the others though, Laura had heard, were later not averse to letting drop that they went to school with me, when I became famous as well as infamous!
Peggy now lived in Melbourne and they saw each other only when she came to England to see her folks. True friends, Laura had learned, were the few you still had when life had weeded the others out. It was as well that people had families to rely on.
These were her musings while she sat in the living-room with her feet up, waiting for Jake to return with the magazine he had offered to fetch for her from Bessie’s room. A more considerate husband than he would be hard to find. During the anxious period now behind them he had cut down on his business travels, rather than leave Laura to cope alone.
Tomorrow though, he was off to Hong Kong and they were enjoying a quiet hour or two with the house to themselves. Jeremy was away with A.P. on the broadening trip that would precede their sheltered interlude at Oxford, and Janis at the theatre with Kurt – a change from the University Jewish Society activities necessary to combat increasing anti-Semitism on too many college campuses.
“Would you mind coming upstairs, Laura?” she heard her husband call.
She was half-way there when he added crisply, “There’s something in your daughter’s room I’d like you to see.”
Laura stopped short and gripped the banister. The way Jake had put it was as if he had slapped her face, and even more hurtful. To me, Janis and Jeremy and Bessie are our children. Well, she’d just learned it wasn’t like that for Jake.
“What’s all the fuss about?” she said coldly when she joined him beside the spilled mound of childish junk on the floor.
Jake brandished a dog-eared exercise book. “This,” he replied. “‘My Secrets’ your daughter has called her scribblings. Would you care to take a look at them?”
“No, thanks. And you ought not to’ve invaded Bessie’s privacy.”
Jake laughed brusquely. “It’s her mother’s privacy I seem to’ve invaded.” He opened the exercise book. “Allow me to refresh your memory, Laura, by reading something aloud to you: ‘My mummy had lots of boyfriends, but I only liked the ones who didn’t mind me coming in bed with them for a cuddle.’”
Laura felt the blood ebb from her face but stood her ground. “All right. You didn’t marry an angel and now you know it.”
“But I didn’t know it before I married her, did I? She made sure of that.”
“Perhaps because she knew in her bones that you are in some respects a ‘Mr Barrett of Wimpole Street’.”
“And what does that make her?”
“A bloody fool, for thinking that didn’t matter.”
“That isn’t how I see it.” Jake flicked over a page in the exercise book, his expression grim. “And what I find equally appalling is what I’m about to read to you: ‘When I grow up I want to be exactly like my mummy.’”
Laura’s response was, “I’m no angel and you’re respectability personified, but I doubt that Jeremy has any desire to become a replica of his father. And I repeat that you had no right to open and read that book.”
“Shall I tell you why I did? It was hidden under all that stuff now on the floor. While searching for the magazine – which I still haven’t found – I accidentally knocked that lot off the table with my elbow. If we hadn’t had the trouble with Bessie we’ve had, I should just have smiled and returned it to its hiding place. But with a kid like her – well who knows what’s going on in her mind and what it could later lead to?”
A silence followed and it was as though a wall had risen between them. Not a wall, my past, thought Laura. And how incongruous was the setting, the ambience of innocence all around me, she registered eyeing the little-girl décor, frilly curtains at the windows, the flounced dressing-table, the teddy bear Bessie still slept with propped up on the pretty pink duvet.
“I’m the woman I am, Jake,” Laura said quietly, “and it’s come as a shock to you. If you don’t love me enough to live with what you now know, I’m better off without you. Would you mind putting Bessie’s exercise book back exactly where you found it? I don’t want her damaged by this. I’ll help you gather up the stuff you knocked on the floor.”
But while they shared the task, they remained worlds apart. “Worlds” is the right word, thought Laura. It isn’t the age difference. It’s how we lived before we met and how we tick. It would be a relief not to have to pretend any more. For Laura not to have to watch her tongue.
For two pins she’d call it a day, here and now. Pack her things and Bessie’s and ask Marianne to put them up till she found a flat.
“Let’s get a move on with this,” she said. “Or Bessie will soon be home from Val’s party –”
“But Janis, no doubt, will go somewhere after the theatre and stay out half the night! And Jeremy hasn’t kept in touch since he left England.”
“It’s time you stopped expecting him to,” Laura replied.
“In your opinion.”
If Laura called it a day, she’d be walk
ing out on Janis and Jeremy, too. “I also have an opinion about your expectations of Janis. Let me put it to you this way. What young people can’t do with their parents’ approval, they are just as likely to do without it. You might consider attaching that to Jeremy also, since he’s about to leave home.”
Laura paused briefly. “But since I may not be their mum for much longer, I should perhaps keep my opinions to myself.”
Jake stopped restoring some books of fairy tales to their disorder on the table. “Why does Bessie keep so much junk? All those beads and bangles and dolls’ clothes she used to play with but doesn’t anymore? And what the hell are you talking about, Laura?”
“The answer to your first question is Bessie is a hoarder, like her namesake was. My gran never threw anything out. She also had a passion for cut glass and the family used to call her house the crystal palace –”
“How did cut glass get into this conversation?”
“I don’t really know, but since it did, I’ll mention too that I had it in mind to give half of my gran’s collection, left to me and still stored in Manchester, to Janis when she marries. The other half will be kept for Bessie. Plain though she is, goodness shines out of her and the right man will recognize it and value her.”
Another silence followed, then Laura again spoke her mind. “To me, Jake, both are my daughters, and Jeremy is my son. Janis and Jeremy have become to me a precious legacy acquired by my marrying you and I’d have liked to have known the woman whose blood children they are. She has to have been someone very special. It was you I fell in love with, but the children you brought with you to our marriage are a bonus any second wife would be thankful for.
“When you summoned me upstairs and referred to Bessie as my daughter – it was as if what I believed to be a real family was no more than self-delusion.”
“How like a woman to twist a man’s words! The way I felt when I read what I did, it’s remarkable that I remember what I said, but my words weren’t meant for the interpretation you gave them. A family is built on more solid ground than mere words, Laura.”
“But however solid, the ground shook for you, didn’t it? How is ‘Mr Barrett’ feeling now?”
“Is that going to be your name for me from now on?”
“I’m still not sure there’s to be a ‘from now on’.”
“My dearest girl, it never entered my head for a second that there wouldn’t be –”
“In that case I can now tell you that ‘Mr Barrett’ has long been my private nickname for you.”
Jake managed to smile.
“If you could make that a laugh,” said Laura, “we’re on our way.”
“Give me time,” he said, and took her in his arms.
Chapter 9
Having her brother-in-law to stay, and in Frank’s absence, could not but be a strain for Leona.
She was relieved when he bade her farewell and astonished, ten days later, when he again appeared unannounced. Henry had said he was going to London to see Matthew and Leona had assumed he would fly back to Paris from there. Instead, she learned, he had afterwards gone to visit friends in Edinburgh.
“Where don’t you have friends prepared to put up with you and to put you up?” she asked him. “And you’d better be back in Paris before the two lads you promised can stay with you get there.”
They had just eaten dinner together and Henry was watching her stack the dishwasher.
“If you hadn’t refused to tell me where Frank is staying, I’d be back in Paris now,” he replied.
“Without visiting Matthew, no doubt.”
“You do have a dreadful opinion of me, don’t you?” he said dryly. “Believe it or not, I’d intended visiting Matthew.”
“But I have things to do this weekend, Henry. We’re not all like you, with endless time to fritter away. Since I told you Frank was away for two weeks, you can’t expect me to entertain you between now and Sunday.”
“Heaven forbid! On the other hand, you can’t expect me to have refused the lift to Manchester I was offered by a chap I met in Edinburgh. Train fares grow more astronomical by the minute.”
Leona scraped some leavings from a plate to the pedal bin. Frank giving Henry handouts and I can’t afford to have a waste disposal unit fitted to my sink!
“Anything I can do to help you?”
Yes. Stop popping up in my life to remind me how much I still want you. “No, thanks.”
“Why wouldn’t you let me take you to a restaurant to eat? You didn’t have to cook after your day’s work, which has to be heavier with Frank away and you holding the fort.”
An uncharacteristically thoughtful remark. “What do you suppose I do every evening, Henry? Your brother, too. While you’re living your carefree life, Frank and I come home from the law centre, put a meal together between us, discuss the cases we don’t have time to during the day, watch some TV on the odd occasions we don’t bring work home with us, and that’s it.”
“My carefree life? Well – I suppose that is how it seems to you.”
“How could it not? You’re still on the roller coaster you boarded when you were young, aren’t you? With the accompanying thrills that analogy implies. I’m not saying your political activities aren’t sincere –”
“What exactly are you saying?” Henry cut in.
Leona put some detergent into the dishwasher, shut the door and pressed the switch.
“I suppose that you’ve made a mess of your life – though that wasn’t what I started out to say.”
She took off her apron and Henry followed her to the living-room.
“Remember when Frank and I came to Paris in the sixties?” she went on. “To get you out of gaol, during the student revolt?”
“For which I’ve remained immensely grateful to you.”
“Cut it out, Henry! Nobody in our family demands gratitude and even you should know that. My mind sometimes returns to the girl you were living with at the time –”
“Julekha was one of the good things that I’ve encountered on my rovings.”
“But that’s what she’s remained for you. Just an encounter and it helps prove my point. I recall your once bringing her to Manchester. Though the family would’ve preferred her to’ve been Jewish, needless to say, I’m sure that our late lamented elders let themselves hope that at last Henry was about to settle down, have a homelife instead of wandering the world taking some of the risks that in your time you have.”
The September evening had grown chilly and Leona paused to ignite the gas fire, gazing reflectively into the flames. “You had a stove of some sort in your flat in Paris, didn’t you?”
“It had several amenities my current place of abode doesn’t have. Julekha, not I, paid the rent for that place.”
“Well, Frank and I didn’t think you could have afforded it! Since money as well as time you’re known to fritter away. How could you have let her, though, Henry? Your brother certainly wouldn’t have. My father had to persuade Frank to let him buy us a house when we got married. Dad would have paid for one twice this size, but Frank isn’t the man to’ve ignored, even when he was young, that the upkeep would be his responsibility.”
“It seems to’ve been yours as well.”
“That was my choice,” Leona replied. “If I hadn’t wanted to work, he would gladly have supported me. Since I did, our careers – if such they may be called! – have been as much side by side as our personal life.”
“And has it yet occurred to either of you that I’m not the only crusader in the family? What the hell else have you two been doing since you set up practice where you did?”
“The difference, Henry, is that isn’t how we see ourselves. You do.” Leona sat down on the sofa and said pensively, “That time we came to Paris, and Julekha cooked a curry, was a memorable evening for me. It was as if I’d seen a new side of you, Henry. The last thing I’d expected was to find framed photos of your relatives in your home. I hadn’t expected it to be a home, just a temp
orary accommodation. But that wasn’t its atmosphere.”
“For that you must blame Julekha! The woman’s touch –”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Henry, just telling you how surprised I was. About the photographs especially. I seem to remember seeing on display too a brass pestle and mortar Rachel Moritz had brought with her from Vienna.”
Henry glanced at the candlesticks on the mantelpiece. “Those wouldn’t have been much use in my life. Frank’s the one with the Sabbath candles set up, so they were passed to him and I got the heirloom you noticed. Like the photographs it goes with me everywhere. Make what you will of that.”
“I have.”
“You’re not just observant, Leona, you’re also perceptive. Got a shock though, didn’t you, to discover a sentimental streak in me?” Henry added as though it was necessary to provide an excuse, “Everyone seeks warmth in bleak moments and memories stirred by reminders of times past are known to serve that purpose – even for a reprobate like me!”
“Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever called you quite that.”
“‘Quite’ being the operative word. The stove you mentioned was a bit of an eyesore,” Henry harked back, “not that I minded.” He smiled reminiscently. “Sometimes, on Julekha’s day off from the hospital, we’d drive out to the country and collect some of the pine logs I liked to burn. What a magnificent scent there’d be from the stove that evening –”
“And you evidently have sentimental memories of Julekha.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m still in touch with her, by the way. She eventually used some of her wealth to set up a children’s clinic. Paediatrics you may remember was her speciality.”
“Is she now married?”
“No, as a matter of fact. Margaret once ran into her when she was nursing in India. The clinic is in Bombay.”
“Another city where there’ll always be a bed for Henry Moritz!” Leona exclaimed. “And please don’t interpret that as well you might. Julekha plainly thought the world of you. Why didn’t you marry her?”