Rock Me Gently

by Judith Kelly

  An old lady sat on a chair holding several shiny black shopping bags. She sold one while we watched, taking the coins and stowing them carefully away in her old purse. In the distance, coming in veiled harmonies through the hot air were the strains of a band of buskers. The raucous music mingled with the smell of flowers, fruit and vegetables from the market stalls.

  Amid the stall gazers and the press of mothers and prams, I saw a small child fall over, only to be gathered up and dusted, soothed, comforted. I stared. I’d forgotten children could be treated like this.

  Mum stopped at a stall that was like a sea chest of treasure, with a dusty heap of brooches, bracelets and rings. There were also brass ashtrays, embroidered match-cases, books too shabby for the bookshop, postcard albums, an electro-plated egg-boiler, a long pink cigarette-holder, a signed postcard of Mrs Winston Churchill, and a plateful of mixed copper coins. A tiny woman sat on a high stool behind the stall. When she opened her mouth, she only had three teeth. She looked like a puckered old apple.

  ‘Come on, love, have a look,’ she said to Mum. ‘I don’t hold no imitations here. You won’t find better.’

  ‘That looks interesting,’ said Mum, pointing to a brooch made of plaited silks.

  ‘That’s a Victorian mourning locket. They liked to be reminded of the dead in those days. Nowadays, it’s out of sight, out of mind.’ She sighed, shaking her head. Her stockings were sagged at the ankles over thick black-laced shoes.

  ‘They cut off the dead person’s hair and weaved the strands into a brooch or ring. Look at the workmanship in that waving hair. What they could accomplish in them days.’

  ‘Ooh, morbid!’ Mum screwed up her face. She chose a pile of beads from a green glass bowl. The woman was selling them at tuppence each.

  ‘Personal worry beads for my collection,’ Mum said to me. She tucked them away in her handbag. ‘I do worry sometimes.’

  I said nothing and gave her a forced smile.

  As we walked on, I noticed it was the stallholders’ raw patter that held the audience. Arms akimbo, they stood on the pavement bawling with surprising speed, loud cries from gritty throats, craftily conning people into buying things they did not want.

  “Ere, come ‘ere! Nah then, give us another line, Jean.’

  The stallholder’s wife, who had a nervous facial tic, held up some chintzy plates.

  ‘That’s it, them plates.’ Taking hold of several, he shuffled them like cards.

  “Ere, don’t muck about, give us them dozen cups and saucers as well. How about that then? These bone china plates and cups and saucers to match, worth a few quid of anyone’s money. But I’ll not charge you twenty quid. Nor ten quid, nor even a fiver.’

  A slight pause, followed by, ‘Tell you what, I’m daft! Who’ll give me a couple of quid for the lot? No? Sod me, I’m giving them away. The kids’ll starve this week. ‘Ere Jean, gimme them dozen side plates as well. C’mon woman, stop gawping at me, we’ve got a living to make.’

  He made as if to throw the pile of china at her. She stood frozen, trying to smile. Through the laughter and rustle of the crowd I recognised the expression in her eyes, and my hand tightened in Mum’s as my stomach flinched in sympathy for the woman. But Mum was laughing too. She didn’t see it any more than the other laughing punters did.

  We sat inside a cafe while Mum drank a cup of tea and I sucked cold lemonade through a straw. It was the most delicious drink I’d tasted in a long time. Mum got out her make-up compact from her handbag and began to powder her nose in the mirror. She kept humming in a preoccupied way, giving close attention to her lips and eyelashes. Finally she smiled at her reflection and snapped the compact shut. Dropping it back into her handbag, she smiled again, as if at a private joke. Crossing her legs, she sat back in her chair and lit a cigarette, puffing a line of smoke into the air.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, blowing bubbles into my lemonade bottle.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Am I still your little girl?’

  There was a long pause. ‘Yes, of course you are,’ she said finally and she took hold of my hand and squeezed it very tight.

  ‘Why shouldn’t you be?’

  ‘No reason,’ I said, and went on blowing bubbles. I loved her so much, but I couldn’t bear to look at her. I was afraid she would see right through me, see past the fear and shame, right through me to the truth. And part of me was angry that she couldn’t see.

  The bubbles made me burp. ‘Oops, pardon Mrs Arden, I’ve got the ‘iccups,’ I said, trying to sound happy.

  A frown touched her face. ‘Your accent and the jargon you use have changed,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘You mustn’t drop your aitches. It sounds common.’

  I found it exciting to use Ruth’s slang and catchphrases when she wasn’t around.

  ‘Everyone speaks like that in the convent.’

  ‘As long as you don’t use it when you’re with me.’ Her look scanned over me, taking in my posture. ‘And your table manners have altered, as well.’

  ‘I have to do as the others do.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You’re not the same as them, you know.’ She stubbed out her cigarette into a saucer, and smiled at me. ‘You’ve taken to boarding school like a duck to water, haven’t you? It shows you’ve got character. I knew you’d get used to it.’

  As she sipped her tea, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I looked at her and tucked my hair behind my ears, clearing my throat. Up until then, she hadn’t mentioned the convent much and I’d told her very little. She had asked me about my schoolwork and I had given her clipped answers, minimising everything, making it sound normal. ‘What books are you reading?’ ‘All sorts of books.’ ‘Have you reached The Ten O’clock Stories yet? ‘I’ve got past them.’ Mum scarcely listened to my answers. I felt all mixed up. Should I tell her the truth now? Would she believe me? What would the nuns do to me if they found out?

  ‘I’ve made my First Communion,’ I said, trying to test her reaction.

  Mum shook a fresh cigarette out of the pack and told me that Jesus had not been the Son of God. ‘Did the idea ever occur to you that Jesus was not what he pretended to be? Did you know that there were many who claimed to be the Messiah in those days? Do you realise that Jesus was just one of a dozen men who made such a declaration?’

  I did not know. I did not realise.

  In the background, dull music whined from a wireless in the cafe. The whiff of cigarette smoke floated towards me. I opened my mouth to say something, and closed it again.

  ‘I love this song,’ Mum said, her eyes growing soft and wet.

  The music was ‘Secret Love’. It trembled across the crumby stained tablecloths, the salt cellars and sauce bottles. Yet music was just a sound. I knew the truth: all of this was just pretend, too good to be true, and she didn’t really want me, she probably never did, not like I wanted her to, anyway.

  I looked around me. At another table sat a family. The mother and father were talking animatedly together and their son and daughter were vigorously teasing one another. I listened to their conversation with covetous envy.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t say that, you liar!’

  ‘Oh, you did!’

  ‘Oh, but I didn’t!’

  ‘I heard you.’

  ‘Oh, there’s a ... whopping great big lie!’

  The mother glanced over her shoulder and smiled at me. I was surprised and suddenly felt weighed down by a feeling of loneliness, an awful lack of understanding. A sense of immeasurable sadness, of injustice, overwhelmed me. I wanted to confide, to lay down burdens. I stared into my lemonade. It was no use. Telling Mum about the nuns would have to wait until the next time I saw her. Maybe she’d want me by then. I bit my lips together to stop the tears.

  I didn’t speak much as the afternoon wore on. I felt too drained for words - it was the smiling that tired me out the most. It made my face ache. That and pretending to Mum that everything was all right. Lying about everything, trying to remember where I was in
the lie so I wouldn’t get caught. It tired me. I needed silence and peace if I was to carryon any life at all. I dreaded my return to the convent.

  When I arrived back at the convent the next day, the children were at Benediction. I sat on my bed in the dimness of the dormitory. Reaching under my mattress, I pulled out my diary. I’d stuck a picture of the Holy Family on the front to make it look like a prayer book. Inside was a black-and-white photograph of Mum with me sitting on her lap. It had been taken when we went to the circus with Nana. Mum was smiling at the camera, and I had no front teeth. Already that child seemed much younger, farther away, a shrunken, ignorant version of myself. I had other pictures of Mum, but this was my favourite, the one that could still make me cry.

  ‘Be a good girl, Judith,’ she had said as she hugged me goodbye. ‘I’ll see you again when I can. Keep writing to me; I love hearing from you.’

  When she had stooped to give me a lipstick kiss, I felt it linger, like a gooey pearl on my cheek. Sister Mary had smiled at her, patting me on the shoulder. ‘We’ll see that she writes, Mrs Kelly, don’t worry.’ She gave Mum a vigorous shake of the hand, which obviously caused her some pain. Mum gave me a sideways glance and I smiled back at her. Then I hugged her tightly again before she went out into the sunshine and I heard the sad sound of the front door being closed and locked behind her. The sour smell of the convent surrounded me again, stifling me. The weekend away might never have happened.

  Now, as I waited for the girls to come back from church, I wondered what Mum was doing. Perhaps she was thinking of me, just as I was thinking of her. But I didn’t really believe it. I stared at the photograph. My hand tightened around it, ready to tear it into pieces.

  I couldn’t do it. Instead came the tears I had been fighting against all day. I curled up on my bed, shedding them in wretched, heaving silence. Tears only mattered to myself, and there was no one here.

  So much had happened since Dad died, one storm after another, and now it was almost like a dream that he had been alive at all. Still, I felt him in my heart; I ached for him, and how could I stop that? No Dad, no Nana and Pop - and no Mum, now, either; not really.

  I sobbed until I was empty of tears. Finally I wiped my streaming face with my pillowcase and returned the photograph to its place beneath my mattress. It was then that I saw it. Frances’s poem for me. Lying back on my bed, I began to read it as I waited for the girls to return. I now realised that we found in each other the solace and security we could not find anywhere else. And as ardently as I desired to leave the convent before something worse could happen to me, I knew I could not. It was my duty to stay, to become part of the awful machinery. The girls trusted one another and we knew there would never be an act of betrayal among us. We had nothing else - no money, no toys, no holidays. Nothing, except each other. And maybe that was all that mattered.

  Chapter 11

  Miriam and I sat on her back steps, drinking coffee. The Carmel Hills were faint purple mounds in the distance, hazy in the sunset. The drone of bees stirred the air in her garden.

  ‘I envy you living here.’ I looked about me. ‘It seems so peaceful.’

  Her face creased as she smiled at me. ‘It is now, but life in Israel is far from enviable. Remember, it hasn’t always been peaceful and probably won’t be again in the future. Israel knows more about war than it knows about peace.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  She shrugged her small shoulders. ‘There is something in Jews that arouses an insanity in other people.’ Her expression turned quizzical, her brow lined as if she were trying to solve a puzzle in her head. ‘The German cruelty towards the Jews was a singular kind of madness - all we wanted was to live a normal life without fear and persecution. Build a better future for ourselves.’

  I nodded, and we sat in silence for some time. I thought about persecution, and the orphanage, and sipped at my coffee. I wanted to tell Miriam everything. I remained silent, staring at the changing light on the hills.

  My kibbutz mother and I had traded the outlines of our lives by now, but I had only given the convent the scantest of mentions - an explanation to fill in the years eight through twelve. I couldn’t do more, not yet. It would break me down, and I wasn’t ready to deal with it. For the time being, the rising pressure within me seemed eased by talking of safer things: stories about the boarding school I had been sent to after the convent, stories of Nana and Pop, of my dad.

  As the twilight deepened, the moon threw light on the clusters of houses scattered throughout the kibbutz.

  ‘Houses without people,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Where are the people?’

  ‘You’re the people, the new ones coming here. But the trouble is, most of you don’t want to stay on the kibbutz. You want your frivolities, your buses and your department stores and your pavement cafes. Not you, I mean. I’m talking about the others, the sabonim.’

  I took a slow sip of coffee. ‘Sabonim?’

  ‘The word means soap.’ She traced a circle on the table with her finger, as if rummaging through some special jar full of memones.

  ‘That’s what the kibbutzniks always call the new arrivals. Like the soap the Germans made out of the ones they gassed. What can you do but make a joke? Listen, I was in Auschwitz, I know it was no joke. But we didn’t all die under torture. And if we went on to live, they thought we were soap anyway.’

  I held my coffee cup in both hands, looking at her.

  She smiled sadly at me. ‘Not much of a joke, I’m afraid. The important thing about the Jewish people is that we are here, alive, vital, together, expressing ourselves on the ruins of our near-destruction, and that is everything.’

  ‘You’re in a good mood today,’ observed Cydney. ‘I’d say you look like an English sunbeam. I mean it as a compliment.’

  Cydney’s capacity to forget petty arguments and live in the moment made her generous. She was all-forgiving and did not sulk, and in the instant that she crossed the dining hall to sit next to me for breakfast, it was as if there had never been any trouble between us.

  I grinned at her. ‘It’s my birthday.’

  ‘Wow! Happy birthday.’ She shoved her spectacles back up her nose and smiled. ‘You must like getting older, do you?’

  I laughed as I picked up my fork. All around us was clatter and conversation as the kibbutz ate. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘You spend a lot of time with your kibbutz mother. What do you guys talk about?’

  I looked up, a piece of melon speared on my fork. ‘Anything. I don’t know. Why?’

  She buttered some toast. ‘Just curious. Everyone always talks about her, you know. She’s like a legend here. What kind a things?’

  ‘Whatever we feel like. She’s an easy person to talk to. Once in a while she gives me a little lecture -’ I leant back in my chair, and made a poor attempt to imitate Miriam’s German accent. We both, laughed at my failure.

  ‘She sounds terrific,’ Cydney said. ‘Hey, I’d like to join you on your next visit, maybe. What do you think?’

  I shrugged. ‘Sure. Of course you can.’

  But I did not really intend to invite her. I had tried not to mention my visits to Miriam to anyone. I was possessive of her and didn’t want to waste a moment of my time with her. After all, she was opening doors for me. Doors of perception that I would have hammered at for years before they moved an inch.

  Helping Miriam sort books in the library one afternoon, she said, ‘So tell me, what brought you to Israel? I don’t think you’ve ever told me.’

  The gramophone was playing Mozart, but so softly that the quiet parts were inaudible and the loud parts were a crackling buzz.

  ‘No big mystery. I spent a good part of my childhood in that crummy orphanage. I used to dream of the world outside full of people and adventure, and I swore to see it all some day.’

  ‘Oh? Well, you’d best get out there and see a bit of Israel, then. Your time here is over soon, isn’
t it?’

  The thought sent a pang of apprehension through me. ‘I’ve been asked by my room-mate to join her and two boys on a trip to Jerusalem, but I’d rather stay here.’ Especially since one of the boys was Rick, who had been blatantly flirting with me for weeks now. Much too dangerous to go away anywhere with him.

  Miriam looked amazed. ‘But why? Take my advice: don’t let your life go by without you. None of us gets any other life than this one, and it’s a shame if you don’t make it happen the way you want it to.’

  ‘Yes.’ I turned a book over in my hands. Pride and Prejudice. ‘But life’s not always that easy, is it?’

  She shook her head with a quick grimace. ‘It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s life.’

  ‘No, what I mean is that sometimes there’s not much we can do to stop things from getting away from us.’ I groped for the words to explain myself. ‘It’s like an avalanche. Once events start rolling, once you make your first mistake or even just your first real decision, there’s not much that you can do after that. Everything is out of your control.’

  I was gripping the book too tightly. I turned away, shoving it in the shelf.

  Miriam smiled softly, touched my arm. ‘Judith, listen to me. I understand you. I understand what your life has been about. I know how it feels to grow up alone, without love and hope and all the things that give life meaning. I know how much that can damage you. I know how it can turn the whole concept of trust into the most terrifying thing in the world.’

  My throat tightened as I looked at her. Her blue eyes were soft and kind. ‘Maybe it’s time we opened that parcel, Judith, what do you think? We can look at those pictures together. What we talk about is entirely up to you. I might ask you to explain something that I’m not clear about, but that’s all. Basically, you decide. Is that all right?’

  I nodded my head.

  ‘It’s entirely up to you.’

  The weight of the past rose up to stifle me, and my first instinct was to run away again. But we had come too far for that, Miriam and 1. For a moment I saw all of my roads converging inevitably to this one, leaving me no choice. I needed to do this. I needed to open up.