Newcomers in an Ancient Land

by Paula Wagner

  From the port in Brindisi, we caught a train for Paris. Chugging northwest on a journey of two days and two nights, it skirted the Swiss Alps before crossing into France. The rhythmic clickity-clack of its wheels left me alternately soothed, anxious, or excited. At the cavernous Gare du Nord, we changed trains, this time heading for Calais, the point of departure on the north coast of France where yet another ferry would carry us across the English Channel.

  With the vibrant midsummer colors of the Mediterranean and the terra-cotta tones of Italy and France long behind us, the color of sky and water blended into slate as we crossed the choppy channel toward the British Isles. The romantic-sounding name evoked a sudden surge of attachment for my birthplace, even though I’d grown up in the US with only a year in an English boarding school when I was fourteen, which now seemed eons ago. This wasn’t my first voyage over the sea, yet suspended between continents, I felt unmoored. Where was my anchor in the world? My old insecurities wavered back at me, only to dissolve again like endless images in the watery mirror of the sea. Neither fully English, American, nor Jewish, not to mention being the double of a twin, each identity seemed to cancel out the other until I felt whole in nothing.

  Luckily the fog in my brain began to lift as the chalky Cliffs of Dover emerged on the horizon like faintly penciled outlines signaling England’s southern coast. At my side, Naomi voiced the unspoken worries that had dogged us both throughout the trip.

  “Too bad we wasted so much time worrying how Mom and Dad will react to our plans instead of enjoying our adventure!”

  “Right! Let’s definitely lighten up on the way back!” I agreed as we hoisted our heavy bags onto the train for London and sank exhausted into our seats. As soon as the porter arrived, we ordered tea. Ah! While I’d been scouring the planet in search of home, perhaps it had simply been hiding in this mug of English tea!

  “Let’s climb the Acropolis and ask the Oracle to predict our futures on our way home.”

  In two short weeks we’d be home—if Israel was indeed our new home. Although England would always taste of home no matter where I went, I was still intent on planting my heart in the rocky soil of Israel. Whatever else happened, my love affair with the land would endure.

  Chapter 25

  LONDON

  The fears that had plagued me from Haifa to London evaporated as soon as my mother’s smiling face greeted me at the door of the rented house in Hampstead. Dad put his bear paws around Naomi and me, pulling us into his arms as he’d done when we were little, while Laura squeezed in and Jon grinned from ear to ear. We were all delighted to be reunited as a family, as if we’d been teleported from two sides of the globe to meet at this midway point in London. Between warm hugs and ample mugs of tea, Naomi and I shared our most recent adventures of trains, ferries, and foreign lands.

  The best feature of the house in Hampstead was the baby grand piano that dominated the living room, perfect for Dad’s sabbatical. At the top of a winding staircase was an extra bedroom for Naomi and me. Still, the unfamiliar house didn’t quite feel like my mother’s family home in the north London suburb of High Barnet, where she’d grown up. Her brother Peter and his wife, Betty—my aunt and uncle—lived there now. Having spent many weekends and holidays with them during our year of boarding school, Naomi and I had come to think of the house on Manor Road as our home away from home.

  All my memories and my mother’s stories of London were centered in that house. When my grandparents had lived there during WWII, they had converted the upstairs into a flat which my mother and Betty shared while Dad was still stationed on a US Army base and Uncle Peter was serving in the RAF—the Royal Air Force. German buzz bombs were still blanketing London, and family legend had it that one had narrowly missed the house, sending my mother into shock. Traumatized, she had tried to cancel her engagement. As early as I could remember, that story had been a staple in the repertoire of my parents’ courtship and marriage. But Dad wasn’t one to accept defeat without a fight, so he’d rushed from his army base to the house on Manor Road.

  “She doesn’t want to see you,” my grandmother had protested, trying to bar him at the door. Abandoning his usual decorum, Dad had brushed her aside and rushed upstairs to plead with my mother, as she languished in bed. “But Jeannie, you promised!” In the end, my mother had relented, forsaking her home and family for an American soldier.

  Within three months of celebrating their wedding on August 16, 1944, my mother was carrying twins. The conflict that had consumed their youth and also sparked their romance continued to rage until June of 1945, barely a month before she delivered. Naomi and I would bring a happier kind of chaos into the midst of ruin.

  As a child, I had found this tale supremely romantic— Dad’s faith and dedication in overcoming Mom’s helpless hesitation—a Yankee hero saving his reluctant English bride from death and destruction. But once the honeymoon of my homecoming was over, and my father began begging me to abandon my fiancé, just as he’d once beseeched my mother not to abandon him, I began to rethink the myth of their marriage.

  1959-60 in London: Naomi, Paula and English cousins; the House on Manor Road; Channuing School Uniforms

  Jean, Jon and Laura on the Isle of Whight, 1964

  Chapter 26

  WEDDING DRESSES

  Sewing our wedding dresses would keep us plenty busy during our visit in London. Since our early teens Naomi and I had sewn most of our clothes, so the task didn’t seem too daunting. The sewing machine at the Hampstead house would be perfect for the job. In keeping with kibbutz customs, our gowns would be in a simple informal style but at least we could choose fancy material. Such fabrics were scarce in Israel, so we planned to go shopping at Selfridges, the famous department store on Oxford Street.

  With a smile that was half relief and half regret, Mom wished us luck with our shopping but declined to join us.

  “I need to be here when Laura gets home from school,” was her excuse, but Naomi and I knew better. Our mother hated shopping. Growing up, she and her two older sisters had worn unfashionable school uniforms or matching “frocks” sewn by a tailor from the same bolt of fabric. As the youngest, she had inherited her sisters’ hand-me-downs, so the color and style of her dresses rarely changed. Even on summer holidays, she wore whatever clothes would do for what she referred to as “mucking about”—sailing an old boat or going on rainy camping trips with her cousins on the Isle of Wight. Just when she might have become interested in clothes as a teenager, the war broke out so there was virtually nothing to buy. Finally, by the time she arrived in America, she had twins to dress on a tight budget and little confidence in her choices. The shopping trips of my own childhood were invariably stressful, almost always punctuated by tears of frustration. By the time I turned eleven I had vowed (another promise) to break this pattern if I had daughters of my own when I grew up.

  Ironically, my mother’s fashion phobia did not extend to theatre costumes; quite the contrary. With her background in drama, no effort or expense was too much where dazzle and authenticity were at stake. A wisp of lace or a length of burlap could light up her passion. I could never reconcile this paradox, much less figure out where a wedding gown might fit it in. With all that in mind, I felt more relieved than disappointed that she wasn’t coming with us, yet part of me regretted not being able to share this mother-daughter rite of passage.

  Emerging from the Tube at Oxford Circus, the sight of the massive gray façade and gilded windows of Selfridges felt intimidating. Compared with my life on the kibbutz, the sheer properness of shopping in London felt overwhelming. Revolving doors soon swept us into a marbled lobby glittering with chandeliers, where a directory showed us to the fabrics department. The elevator door slid silently closed, and suddenly we saw ourselves reflected like clones multiplied by a dozen gilded mirrors. Naomi gasped. For some reason, she always felt trapped in elevators. But when our feet sank into the plush carpet of the top floor, we gasped in amazement at the magical forest of
fabrics surrounding us: huge bolts arrayed by color, texture, solid, or print; plaids, florals, flannels, worsted wools; organza, voile, taffeta, velvet, corduroy, and Viyella, a soft-spun cotton that was popular at the time. A rainbow of melon, mauve, maroon, and magenta melted into olive, teal, and lavender; buttery yellows and muted champagnes competed with regal reds and royal blues. I yearned to caress their soft and silky textures until, sensing the chemical in the fabrics, my eyes and nose began itching violently. Instinctively, I reached for the tissues I always carried in case of an allergy attack.

  Blowing my nose as discreetly as I could, I followed Naomi blindly to the bridal section, where she immediately fell in love with an off-white peau de soie fabric, whose matte finish would drape beautifully in the pattern she had chosen. We had ruled out pure white, as it did not suit our red hair and freckled skin. But the modest A-line style of her gown, sleeveless with a scooped neck, would blend in perfectly on Hazorea, where dressing up was considered bourgeois.

  I coveted the same fabric for my own dress, but Naomi had found it first, and besides, we had each developed our own taste in clothes by now. We had rarely dressed alike in the past (not that this had helped in telling us apart) and wouldn’t have considered starting now. Finally I settled on a slightly stiffer embossed material in pale champagne, and a pattern with a fitted bodice, wide-scoop neck, full skirt, and three-quarterlength sleeves. We were both thankful to dispense with long trains and lacy veils.

  Our shopping done, we headed to the tearoom, where a prim waitress led us to a table.

  “This is very posh? Naomi observed with a wry smile. I hoped she wasn’t conjuring up some escapade designed to shock the prissy staff. But she restrained herself. “Remember the last time we were at Selfridges?”

  “Of course. It was the summer before our year at Channing School right here in London. That was the most fun ever. Just you, me, and Mom tootling around England on a train, meeting all our cousins and laughing at everything, especially when people mistook us for three sisters.”

  Mom had taken Naomi and me to England to meet her family and get settled before our year in boarding school, leaving Dad at home in California with eight-year-old Jonathan and eighteen-month-old Laura. His music teaching salary couldn’t stretch far enough for all six of us to go.

  “Imagine, Mom was only thirty-seven and we were just fourteen,” Naomi continued.

  “Seems like a lifetime ago,” I added. “And now we’re getting married.”

  Suddenly I felt very grown up compared with the uncertain fourteen-year-old girl of five years before. Soon we were trading delicious memories of that summer in 1959 with our newfound English family like call and response.

  “Tea and crumpets with Auntie Betty.”

  “Raspberries and clotted cream with Granny and Grandpa in their garden in the Isle of Wight.”

  “B&Bs with lumpy straw mattresses.”

  “Fried bread and stewed tomatoes for breakfast.”

  “Auntie Mu’s Scotch pancakes.”

  “Teasing cousin Robert on the farm.”

  That memory still made us laugh. Cousin Robert, fourteen like us, had been pressed into helping with the summer harvest. Along with his sister Fiona, Naomi and I were to bring him his afternoon tea out in the fields. But we couldn’t resist the chance for a prank. Instead of preparing a workman’s picnic of basic brown bread sandwiches and a thermos of tea, we created a high tea of dainty triangular cucumber and Marmite sandwiches, their white crusts neatly cut off. Then we poured his tea into a baby bottle and attached a large rubber nipple used for feeding the lambs. When the queen’s tea was ready, we packed it all into a basket topped with colorful ribbons. Red-faced with embarrassment in front of the older field hands, Robert had chased us over the stubbles until we fell down laughing.

  That summer had been idyllic. Mom looked so young that many people took us for sisters as we traveled from London to the countryside getting to know our new English family. The three of us were enjoying every minute, until suddenly a dark cloud dampened our fun. Two weeks before the start of boarding school, an emergency telegram arrived from Dad with the shock of a fierce summer storm:

  Jeannie, come home immediately. Full stop.

  I can’t cope without you. Full stop.

  Love, Leon. Full stop.

  Quick as lightning, my resentment flared. Why did Dad always seem to compete for Mom’s attention? Finishing our tea at Selfridges, we compared notes. But Naomi was more understanding of Dad’s predicament.

  “Jonathan was probably driving him crazy, and Laura was still just a toddler.”

  “But he wasn’t teaching summer school. Plus he had that crazy woman Mrs. Howe to cook and keep house.”

  “You mean the woman who held séances? No wonder Jonathan was acting up. She was also a terrible cook.”

  “But Mom was supposed to get us settled before boarding school. Instead we had to buy our school uniforms all by ourselves.”

  “But Auntie Betty did do her best to help. And we did have a great time that year once we got over our homesickness.”

  We went back and forth on the pros and cons of our unexpected independence that year. True, once we’d adjusted to English life, our sibling competition had diminished and our relationship had improved. Perhaps because we truly needed each other that year, we hardly fought at all.

  Sipping tea at Selfridges, I suddenly longed to hop on the familiar Northern Line (colored black on the Tube’s map) as Naomi and I had done on rare weekend breaks from boarding school. Exiting the station at High Barnet, we had walked the remaining way down a steep hill to the old family home on Manor Road where our mother had grown up and her brother Peter still lived with his wife Betty. But High Barnet was too far for a visit now.

  Whenever we’d had a holiday from boarding school, we had toggled between my mother’s family by Tube and/or train: to Auntie B and Uncle Peter in north London; to Auntie Tre (Teresa) and Uncle Colin on an RAF base somewhere in the north; and Auntie Mu (Muriel) and Uncle Andrew on their farm in Huntingdon, not far from Cambridge. Although we were never without their support, the challenge of traveling alone in a foreign land had made us grow up fast.

  Our mother had agonized over the telegram. But in the end she had dutifully packed her bags. Perhaps reassuring herself as much as us, she’d declared us grown up enough to take care of ourselves.

  But Mom’s departure abruptly cancelled our summer fun, leaving our spirits crushed like wildflowers after a violent storm. Although Aunt B’ did her best to cheer us up, her bubbly optimism was no match for my mounting dread of boarding school.

  “So that’s how we found ourselves alone at Selfridges at the tender age of fourteen?” I asked, bringing the conversation full circle.

  “Right. Remember how Mom insisted we order the Royal Doulton china she had her heart set on but didn’t have time to buy before she left, so she instructed us to place the order?”

  “Maybe the task didn’t seem so daunting to her since she grew up in London.”

  Then as now, when it came to shopping, Mom was a no show. But having grown up in small towns across the US, taking on London alone for the first time had been both terrifying and exhilarating for us.

  “I’ll never forgive Dad for that telegram,” I declared, feeling my original resentment rise again in my chest. I had felt so abandoned that it never occurred to me that my younger siblings, especially Laura, probably missed Mom as much or more than I did. The competition for attention in our family was a constant tug of war, with Mom forever in the middle.

  But five years later, this shopping trip to Selfridges had been a different story. This time I had navigated the city’s concrete canyons with the confidence of a young woman on a mission. Clutching our bulging shopping bags brought us both back to the challenge of the moment: Could we finish our wedding dresses in ten days?

  Chapter 27

  A HITCH IN PLANS

  Naomi and I were busy sewing when Dad’s sonorous
voice floated upstairs, breaking my concentration as I fed the silky fabric into the machine’s whirring jaws.

  “Girls, please come down for a family meeting.”

  I was almost done with the seams of the skirt. The bodice and sleeves lay on the bed beside me, cut out with pinking shears like a life-sized paper doll. On the floor, shimmering scraps of material and thread transformed the nondescript rug into a magic carpet that might somehow transport me over the threshold to womanhood in my glowing wedding gown.

  Naomi worked at the ironing board while I took my turn at the sewing machine. Then we’d trade places, interrupting our marathon flow only for tea and snacks. The combination of excitement and stress reminded me of high school sew-a-thons, when my girlfriends and I had turned out the latest fashions from pedal pushers to prom dresses in record time.

  But Dad was insistent. Feeling rushed, I pressed harder on the electric treadle, only to watch in horror as the thread knotted in the needle and the material bunched dangerously under the presser foot. Hunched over the machine, my neck muscles tightened as I rescued the gown in the nick of time. Why hold a family meeting now? Dad never brooked any interruptions when he was composing a new piece on the piano. But the domestic arts apparently didn’t carry the same weight.

  The last thing I wanted now was another of Dad’s paternal talks—more like quizzes and lectures calling into question René’s limited education, his dubious ability to support us, my tender age, and my deferred college scholarship. Without raising his voice, his calm, logical tone induced unbearable guilt. Logic was a fine tool for intellectual arguments but all wrong for affairs of the heart. But Naomi’s relationship with Dad was different. Where he and I butted heads, she used humor. Where I craved his approval, she feigned indifference. Despite my parents’ best efforts to avoid it, I had become my mother’s daughter, while Naomi seemed closer to Dad. Over time, the nicknames they had innocently pinned on us as toddlers—Pretty Polly and Naughty Nanie—had grown into lifelong roles.