Rose of Jericho

by Rosemary Friedman

  Three

  The fight had been uphill. The message was conveyed to Patrick that, with the diamond engagement ring, brought back from South Africa by his grandfather and which he had accepted from his grandmother, went the quid pro quo that he would concede in the matter of the wedding.

  Kitty tackled Rachel for what was not the first time.

  “It’s ludicrous,” Rachel said. “People don’t have big weddings.”

  “Why is the King Solomon Suite booked up almost a year ahead?”

  “Some people!”

  “One day,” Kitty said. “That’s all we’re asking. You’re being very difficult. I can’t see your objection.”

  “It’s a waste of money to start with…”

  “Nobody’s asking you to pay…”

  Rachel sat on the floor in her tired cords. There were holes in the elbows of her jumper. “In the streets of Calcutta,” she said, “children are dying from hunger. Carts come every morning to collect the bodies.”

  “There’s a lot of trouble in the world,” Kitty said. “Don’t change the subject.”

  Rachel looked at her.

  Kitty tried a new tack.

  “Weddings are important. Something to look back on. A day to remember.”

  “Do you remember yours?”

  Kitty cast her mind back with difficulty.

  “I think it’s very selfish,” she said. “There aren’t that many happy occasions.”

  “All those people we don’t even know…”

  “You’ll have the rest of your lives on your own…”

  “We’ve made up our minds,” Rachel said. “It’s out of the question.”

  Kitty examined her trump card. She did not like blackmail.

  “For your father. God Rest his Soul.” She touched Rachel lightly on her Achilles heel. “Do you remember how he used to talk about your wedding? His ‘little Rachel’…?”

  She watched as the tears filled Rachel’s eyes; as she went to the window to hide them; as she wiped away the pear-shaped drop that stole down her cheek with the back of her hand that wore Mrs Klopman’s diamond.

  “…he put money aside for it. Told me to be sure…when he knew he wouldn’t live to see it. Do you remember how he used to tease you?”

  It was Sydney’s greeting to Rachel when she came to the flat for dinner.

  “When’s the wedding?” A veiled reminder to her to stop getting involved with non-Jewish boys.

  “He even bought the champagne,” Kitty said. “It’s in Issy Miskin’s…”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  Kitty held her tongue. In the silence she recognised the special rapport that had existed between Rachel and Sydney. She did not disturb it.

  “I suppose you’ll be wanting bridesmaids next.” Rachel said into the curtain.

  “Only Debbie and Lisa.” Kitty’s voice was gentle, acknowledging the tenuousness of her triumph. “If you give me that jumper,” she said, “I’ll darn it.”

  Kitty was glad that Addie had booked on El Al. To be asked to fasten her seat belt, extinguish her cigarette, in the language in which God had addressed Abraham and Abraham had spoken to his son, filled her with a sense of pride and of belonging which she was unable to put into words. Looking round the plane at the Jewish strangers from Minsk or Manchester, Safed or Chicago, who chatted in their seats or congregated in the aisles, she realised that she felt more at home with them than she did with many gentiles whom she knew more intimately.

  A stewardess with the dark skin and deep liquid eyes of the Yemen stood motionless outside the galley with her trolley as the tannoy crackled above her head.

  “Ladies and gentlemen would you kindly return to your seats so that our cabin staff may serve you with lunch…” The message was repeated in Hebrew.

  The King Solomon Suite had been reserved. Hettie Klopman had telephoned to say so. After her holiday, after Israel, Kitty would have to start thinking about the wedding in earnest. Once into the New Year the time would soon go. There would be guest lists to compose, invitations to send out, decisions to make concerning dresses – she had already consulted Rika Snowman, who, at Cupid of Hendon, specialised in Bridal Wear (and had made Carol’s), about Rachel’s dress – and table plans, for which she needed Sydney to prevent her being swallowed without trace into the well-meaning maw of the Klopmans. Kitty had already ceded the question of the synagogue – Rabbi Magnus was to participate in the wedding ceremony, but at Herbert’s shul – and recognised the matter as the first in what was to be a series of skirmishes. The second encounter had concerned the engagement notice for the Jewish Chronicle, and the Klopmans had won, hands down. Kitty, as the mother of the bride, had proposed a simple statement which had been approved by Rachel and Patrick. The Klopmans had suggested minor changes, and Herbert had offered to complete the text, and drop it into the newspaper on the way to his office. When the announcement appeared, heading the week’s ‘matches’, it ran to twelve lines, encompassing Rachel’s middle name ‘Sadie’ – which she hated – Patrick’s medical degrees (he wanted to know why his mother had not included the fact that he had passed his piano exams – without distinction – to grade four), references not only to Rachel’s late father, which was appropriate, but to Mrs Klopman senior, the late Meyer Klopman, and to Magda and Joseph Silver, Hettie Klopman’s parents, complete with their retirement address in Miami, Florida. The only thing which her future in-laws had omitted to declare publicly, according to Rachel, was how often she changed her underwear.

  Twice a week, when he came for dinner, Kitty discussed the wedding with her nephew Norman, using him as a sounding board. It gave her something on which to concentrate her mind.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…” There was a hysterical edge to the captain’s voice. “…if you do not return to your seats the cabin staff will be unable to serve you…”

  The aisles were still full, the conversation animated, punctuated by gunfire bursts of laughter. It was like a Jewish wedding, Kitty thought. She had weddings on the brain these days, which was hardly surprising considering what she was planning with Hettie Klopman for Rachel and Patrick. She could not help comparing it with that, exactly a year ago now, of Sarah to her only son, Josh.

  Their wedding had taken place in a Leicester Register Office. Josh’s father would not have approved. Kitty did not approve either, although her disapproval was equivocal because she loved Sarah, who was not Jewish, and had come to feel a closeness to her greater sometimes than she enjoyed with her own daughters. It was Sarah to whom she had turned after Sydney’s death, Sarah who had comforted her and sat beside her in synagogue on the holidays, Sarah who seemed to understand the shadow beneath which she lived and which had replaced the substance of her life.

  At first Kitty had wondered whether she should go to the wedding after all. Sydney would not have done. Of that there was no doubt. She had allowed herself to be swayed by the pleadings of Sarah and Josh. Sydney’s family had rallied round, more from curiosity, Kitty thought uncharitably, than anything else. In a convoy they had made their way through the winter snows up the freezing motorway to Leicester.

  Deirdre MacNaughton, Sarah’s mother who had brought the dogs with her in the back of her Land Rover, waited for them in her wellington boots in the Registrar’s Office where the heating had broken down and breaths were visible on the gelid air. Kitty introduced Beatty and Mirrie and Freda – Sydney’s sisters – and Freda’s husband Harry, and Juda, Sydney’s younger brother. Huddled in their fur coats (Juda in an astrakhan hat he had bought in Russia) they waited, rubbing their hands, silently – more like a funeral than a wedding, Kitty thought, for Sarah’s Uncle Arthur, her mother’s brother, and her only relative, who had flown in from Nairobi.

  Watching Josh, who should by rights have been beneath a chuppah, standing in front of the Registrar’s table with Sarah aglow in her red velvet suit, Kitty felt a sadness that her only son, whom Sydney had reared so assiduously in the ways of his faith, had fo
rsaken his birthright. Standing, though full of love, next to Sarah, he was the jagged ends, the severed connection, in the chain which Sydney had tried so meticulously to preserve. She shed a tear, and it was not her customary wedding one, for the weakness of her child, whose weakness, looking at Sarah, she understood, and for her own complicity.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife!” The Registrar, his nose red, was gathering up his papers.

  “Mazeltov!” Beatty said.

  Deirdre MacNaughton stared at her. When she kissed Kitty her cheek was cold.

  Freda narrowed her eyes at her watch. “Five minutes!” she said. “Hardly worth coming.”

  In the smoking-room of the rambling house, the two sides eyed each other while the butler from the caterers, who had taken the precaution of insulating his insides from the cold, handed champagne. The refreshment seemed all to be liquid.

  “You’d think they’d put something on a biscuit!” Beatty said.

  Sarah’s Uncle Arthur flirted with Rachel who seemed, Kitty thought, to be wearing four sweaters in an effort to keep warm. Beatty listened, transfixed, as Sir Timothy Armstruther, Sarah’s godfather, discussed the perils presented by the weather to his sheep. Harry tried Majorca on Lady Jayne but she wintered in Monserrat and did not know it.

  Kitty wondered how anyone could live in such a cold place. There was a fire in the grate, true, but Sarah’s Uncle Arthur was hogging it. The air in the rest of the room seemed little warmer than that outside where the snow drifted steadily on to the lawns. There was no sign of any central heating and at one point Kitty wondered if there was to be any lunch. The butler was circulating with the umpteenth bottle of champagne and the Leicester party extended their glasses while Josh’s family covered theirs with their hands, shaking their heads, and the women wished they’d worn cardigans over their flimsy dresses.

  “Catch my death,” Mirrie could be clearly heard saying. “I’ve only just got up after flu.”

  In the panelled dining-room the refectory table, which looked as if it had been in the family for years, was laid with place cards. The first course had been served. Josh’s family looked at it with horror. Round the rims of crystal glasses, fat pink prawns were curled obscenely. Sarah whispered to her mother.

  “Good Lord!” Deirdre MacNaughton exclaimed. “You said fish!”

  There was an embarrassed silence while half the company addressed themselves to the prawn cocktails, Juda tried to explain to His Honour Judge Pinkerton across the table that the purpose of the dietary laws, which eschewed the eating of shell fish, was not to make Jews healthy, but, through self-discipline, to make them holy. His Honour seemed fascinated, and Juda, warming to his theme, was explaining how the taboos on food were not felt as primitive, but established an area of daily life in which a Jew recognised some things as pure and some as impure, when they brought in the quennelles, floating like clouds, on their suspiciously rose-coloured sauce. Juda realised that, as the head of the family now that Sydney was dead, everyone was looking to him. He picked up his knife and fork and isolated a shred of familiar looking flesh.

  “Tomato!” he proclaimed.

  Beatty was not convinced. She scraped the sauce ostentatiously to the side of her plate to make room for the new potatoes and the peas.

  The Leicester contingent, floating merrily on a sea of Sancerre, did not notice the poor appetites of Josh’s relatives and Josh himself had eyes only for his new bride.

  Hungry, Beatty asked for two helpings of the Crême Brulée, but there was only just enough to go round. She was summoning up her courage to ask the Judge – who was sitting near them – to pass the After Eights, when Sarah’s Uncle Arthur, exceedingly red in the face, champagne glass in his hand, got to his feet.

  “…Been asked to propose the toast,” he said, one hand jiggling the loose change in his trouser pocket. “…Sarah and Josh.” A long silence covered the table protectively. “Sarah’s a lovely gel. Always been a lovely gel. Poor Dickie would have been proud of her today.” He looked round the table and caught Beatty’s eye. Beatty nodded encouragingly. She liked speeches.

  “As you are no doubt aware,” Uncle Arthur said, “I have – unfortunately – no experience of the matrimonial state. It has been said that marriage is a lottery, in which the prizes are all blanks… I don’t agree. There is no doubt in my mind that in this particular lottery Josh has won the jackpot…”

  “Hear, hear!” Kitty said.

  “…and Sarah – it would appear from my brief acquaintance with her bridegroom – has by no means drawn a blank!”

  Beatty thumped on the table causing Judge Pinkerton, who was dropping off, to jump.

  “…See you all agree with me. Up till now I’ve always been a contented bachelor; but I must confess that today I envy young Josh the visions that I know he sees. Can’t say more than that I wish from the bottom of my heart that his hopes may be fulfilled…”

  It was Uncle Juda’s turn to cheer.

  “…and that he and our lovely Sarah will live long and happily to prove to me the error of my celibate ways. Before speeding them on their journey I would like to welcome Josh to our tiny family and ask you to join me in drinking a bumper toast to the happy pair. As we say in Swahili, ‘Heri’. Sarah and Josh.”

  Josh replied to the toast. Then Uncle Juda, speaking from notes, thanked Sarah’s mother on behalf of the London guests – “never mind the rotten lunch” Beatty could be heard muttering – and by three o’clock it was over.

  Kitty went up to the comfortless bedroom for her coat. There were pictures of horses round the walls, and an electric kettle on the floor where Sarah’s mother made her morning tea. Beside the bed, whose cover was strewn with dog hairs, was a photograph in a silver frame of a man in Court dress. Kitty picked it up.

  “Dickie thought the world of Sarah,” Deirdre MacNaughton said, coming in and startling her.

  On impulse Kitty replaced the photograph and put her arms round her new mechutanista, although she doubted if the term applied.

  Neither of them spoke but between them was the silent intercourse of mothers who had given birth and widows who had loved and lost.

  “So sorry about the luncheon,” Deirdre said. “Sarah did say fish.”

  Kitty looked in the mirror to put on her mink hat. “You weren’t to know,” she said. “As long as they’re happy…”

  Deirdre looked at her blankly, her moment was over – she wondered if the caterers had remembered to feed the dogs.

  Four

  The El Al lunch had not been bad. A roll of smoked salmon – flanked by a lettuce curl, a translucent slice of lemon and three black olives – braised beef in its gravy, with french beans and tiny roast potatoes, and a glazed pineapple tart beneath a whorl of parev cream. The rectangular plastic sections, topped by their transparent plastic hats, in which it was served, gave it an air of unreality, of playing at food, unless it was the flavour which seemed to have been frozen and sterilised out of it. While not exactly a gastronomic experience the meal passed the time. Kitty extracted a knife, fork and spoon from their slim paper envelope and made the food last as long as possible – savouring each morsel as though her life depended on its despatch – in an effort to allay her anxiety as she thought what might have been provided with a little more imagination. Handing the carnage of the tray to the stewardess, who came smilingly to collect it, she brushed the crumbs from her skirt, folded her table away and wondered, since the diversion of the meal was over, how she would pass the remainder of the flight.

  Need overcoming fear, she excused herself to the woman beside her and waited while she collected up handbag, newspapers and pad of airmail notepaper, and stood up to let her out. Making her way through the crowded aisle to the toilets, which were at the rear of the cabin, Kitty glanced at the faces in the rows on either side of the plane. Sleeping – in attitudes of abandon – reading, lost in thought, playing board games, idly returning her glance, each countenance was familiar, yet she knew no one. S
he recognised a Polish peasant, a renowned violinist, her grandfather; the haunted eyes of a concentration camp inmate, Carol at four reading a comic, the infant Josh in a baby sucking at its bottle. In a head of dark hair there was Rebecca and Miriam; in a brow the prophet Isaiah; her late Aunt Esther; Addie’s nephew – recently barmitzvah; a Jewish comedian; a well-known industrialist; they were all there. With a muttered apology she eased herself past the broad back of a man in a homburg. He appeared to be praying but when she’d squeezed by she saw that he was punching a pocket calculator. The plane lurched suddenly, seeming to sink and taking her heart with it. Clutching the nearest seat, Kitty wondered, was she the only one bothered by the tenuous drone of the engines, by the alienation of the situation, high above the clouds in the slim cigar of metal at the mercy of rods and pinions, human calculation and aeronautics? Were there others cold with fear and tense with apprehension who would say a prayer when the undercarriage touched the ground? She knew the statistics. Josh had told her. One thousand deaths, in thirty fatal crashes, for the 750,000,000 passengers carried by the airlines each year. You were more at risk, Josh told her, each time you crossed the road. Kitty had her doubts. As she joined the queue beyond the galley, the sun disappeared leaving a thin red line along the horizon.

  When she came out of the toilet the windows were dark. In London they would be lighting the Chanukkah candles. With no Sydney to perform the ceremony for her, no family party, she was glad to be away. Alec, in Godalming, would be kindling the first light for the children; Josh would be explaining the festival to Sarah, who last year had had a Christmas tree; Rachel and Patrick would not even know.

  Back in the non-smoking section Kitty fastened her seat belt. The sign was not on but she felt safer with the webbing drawn tightly across her lap. She smiled her thanks to the woman on the aisle side of her whose writing pad was now covered with spidery Hebrew script which crossed the page from right to left.