The Bells of Bournville Green

by Annie Murray

  When Gila began to train as a dentist, Shimon had gone to Kibbutz Hamesh for a time, to Gila’s mother. But Mrs Weissman suffered with her health, having black periods of depression and instability. Gila came back one evening from Tiberias pale and strained, bringing Shimon with her.

  ‘I can’t leave him with her – even at Hamesh.’ There were plenty of other people about, but it wasn’t working. She was afraid for Shimon.

  That was when they decided he must stay in Tel Aviv with Auntie Miriam during the term times. Miriam, Gila’s aunt, was a spirited lady who worked at home as a potter and seemed quite able to absorb the company of a small boy into her life. Gila went back and forth as often as she could to see him. But the past three years had been a time of hard work and strain, and David was called up for the army reserve every year as well. There had been very little time or money to be carefree and young. The most they could ever afford was a trip to the cinema now and then.

  It was as if they had not seen each other for a long time. And when they did not see each other, and the stresses of life pressed in on them, the bond between them loosened and it felt as if they were strangers.

  Chapter Forty

  For a few days in August, once exams were over, they went to Haifa to stay with Annaliese.

  It was their chance of a holiday and Annaliese was always delighted to have them there. Often she would join them on the beach, a bus ride away, down the Carmel, sitting under an umbrella to protect her fragile skin, determined to watch every moment of Shimon’s play and swimming.

  David knew they needed some relaxed days, away from all the pressures of work and study. Things were tense between him and Gila. Whereas after Shimon was born Gila had longed for another child and he had tried to persuade her to wait, now it was he who thought they should be trying for a brother or sister for their son. This time though, it was Gila who was holding back, who seemed to have lost the desire for more children that she had felt so burningly before.

  ‘If we don’t have another baby soon, it will be a different generation from Shim!’ David would say, exasperated. He still had the same sense of insecurity and need for family when he had so little.

  ‘Oh, don’t exaggerate,’ Gila would fire back at him. ‘This is my first job. I have to get established. I can’t just take time off. And you’re not qualified! We need the money, Doodi. We have to be practical.’

  ‘We can manage,’ he would argue, galled that she was the one bringing in the most money, though he did not want to admit it. ‘We can’t sacrifice everything for work – what about family – what about life?’

  ‘Oh – you mean it’s my work that should be sacrificed, not yours! I know it would be much more convenient for you if I was at home all the time cooking and cleaning for you and having your babies. But don’t forget, I’m the one earning a proper salary just now . . .’

  And so the arguments went on. And David realized, secretly, that this was just what he did want. It would be so good to come home in the evening when he was tired from a day of classes and laboratories to find his wife less tired than he, less under pressure, his son happy and secure, not wetting his bed, a meal on the table . . . The tender welcome he had received once back from the Front in June had waned quickly and they were back to normal, having hardly the energy for each other again.

  But they did their best to be united in front of Annaliese, and it was easier to be relaxed there, since she longed to mother them and look after them, urging them to rest. In the mornings they all went down to the crowded strip of sand dotted with coloured umbrellas, where they swam and played with Shimon, buying cool drinks from the kiosk at the top of the beach. Usually, when the heat became very intense after midday, they caught the bus back up to the Carmel, sat under the big single tap in Annaliese’s bath and washed the sand off themselves with caressing, tepid water. Then they would eat bread with cheese and hummus, cucumbers and tomatoes, and lie down in the musty-smelling apartment with the blinds closed against the glare, to nap until the fiercest heat was past. This was utter luxury, being able to sink into sleep in the daytime, to wake, sometimes before Shimon, who seemed drugged by the heat and worn out by leaping in the waves. If this happened, they sometimes made love, slippery with sweat like two seals. It made them much better friends for a time.

  Annaliese would wake them with mint tea, or juice, or David would get up and slip out to make something for her. And as they woke one by one they would sit out on the balcony, where the sea was a hazy blue in the distance, and talk softly in the lazy late afternoon.

  David soon noticed that there were changes in Annaliese. There was a new liveliness. If anything, she seemed young for her fifty-eight years, whereas before, while she was caring for Hermann, she had seemed prematurely aged. She pencilled in her eyebrows, fastened her mostly grey hair up in a simple bun and dressed in elegant cotton frocks. And she seemed more animated.

  One afternoon David sat with her at the shady end of the balcony while Gila and Shimon were still asleep. He lounged in the cane chair, barefoot and wearing only a pair of faded shorts, enjoying the tickling breeze on his tanned skin. The two of them sipped mint tea. Annaliese wore a mauve shirtwaister dress and had slipped her knobbly feet out of her sandals. Both her hands and feet had swollen, arthritic knuckles. In the breezy silence she looked fondly at him.

  ‘How are you, my boy?’ When they were alone together they nearly always spoke German. David’s German was basic but he tried to keep it up to please her.

  ‘It’s good to be here – to have a change of scene,’ he said, stretching out luxuriously. ‘And be with you, of course.’

  ‘Ah – you are charming to me!’ she laughed. ‘Your hair looks nice short. Though I suppose I still prefer you with your curls.’

  David ran his hand ruefully over his army-cropped hair. He had thick hair which became wavy when he allowed it to grow.

  ‘I suppose they’re not really the thing for a doctor though either,’ he smiled. ‘There are so many rules about controlling infections.’

  ‘You didn’t answer me.’

  ‘Answer you what?’

  ‘How things are. How you are.’

  Just sometimes, occasionally, he confided in Annaliese about his feelings, his dilemmas. Sometimes she laughed them away – ‘You think you’re the only Jew with a crisis of identity?’ – but at times she listened with gentle sensitivity.

  ‘You don’t give up, do you, old lady?’ he teased her.

  Annaliese sucked her cheeks in, pretending she had no teeth. ‘No, we old people have to beg for any information,’ she said in a quavery voice. ‘No one tells me anything!’

  David laughed. ‘You look very well. Not in the least old.’

  ‘Ah—’ Smiling, she held up a finger. ‘I shall tell you, since you remark on it. But don’t think I have forgotten my question to you. I shall be coming back to that.’

  There was a pause for a moment, then, looking away from him, out over the pines and the sandy-coloured town towards the sweep of the Mediterranean, she said, ‘You know that all the time until Hermann passed away, I was here with him, looking after him. He was my life all those years, since we had no one else remaining. I had a couple of cousins who survived the Nazis but they went to America. Here, there is no one else – well until you came along, Liebchen. So after Hermann had gone, I had a crisis—’

  She held up a hand against his expression of concern, that he had not known.

  ‘There was nothing you could have done, darling. Your existence here was the greatest help to me. Some things have to be lived through, that’s all. I had given so much of myself to Hermann for most of the time that I had been in Israel, on top of all that happened in the war, that I did not know who I was any more. Annaliese Mayer – who is she? I used to sit in front of the mirror sometimes and ask that question. I was in a state of being lost, utterly.’

  She took a sip of her tea, cradling the glass between her hands. David had a struggle to follow some of her
German, but he caught the meaning of what she was saying.

  ‘So, I thought, I must find a person who can help. I went to a lady to whom I could talk, week after week. She was a psychotherapist, they call it. Not a psychiatrist – not a doctor. She was someone who specializes in the cure of talking, of listening and interpreting one’s ills. She helped me a good deal – for two years. And I started to feel better. Then, recently, I met a new friend. His name is Pierre.’ She gave a darting, bashful smile and lapsed into silence.

  ‘Go on,’ David said gently. ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘Well – he was born in Paris. His parents made aliyah in 1920 when he was in his teens. He had a wife and has three grown-up children and he has been living in Haifa since his wife died five years ago . . .’ She gave an impish smile. ‘And what else do you want to know? You will meet him – that is the best thing.’

  Before David could get a word in she leaned forward and laid her hand on his arm for a second.

  ‘And now, you are going to talk to me. Tell me about your life, your studies. What are your thoughts?’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t seem to have many thoughts these days,’ he said ruefully. He drained his tea glass and put it down on the tiles. ‘The last couple of years I’ve had my head down, non-stop, study, study – except for the war . . . And Gila has been studying too . . .’

  Annaliese was giving him a penetrating look which David found disconcerting. She had a gift for seeing deeply into anything he said.

  ‘You are settled – you and Gila? You are an Israeli?’

  These were the questions David tried hard not to think about these days. He had made his aliyah, his migration to Israel. He must stand by that now. Looking down at the floor, at the little water outlet at the end of the balcony, he said, ‘I live here. I fight in the army. My wife is a sabra and my son was born here . . .’

  The prickly pear, the sabra, was the name given to native-born Israelis. They were said to be hard and spiky on the outside, but soft within. How frail and vulnerable were his two prickly pears, he thought, Gila and Shimon.

  ‘But . . . ?’

  He looked up at her. He could not answer her because he did not know the answer himself. All this time he had thrown in his lot, his life, his whole identity with Israel. It had given him a sense of himself when he was young and lost. And the war had been a triumph, he had been part of it all. He could not understand, at this time, the shifting feelings inside him.

  In this moment of their gazing at one another there was a little rattling of the door behind them and Shimon’s face appeared, wide-eyed and tender after waking from sleep. Annaliese’s face broke into a smile.

  ‘Hello, my little darling – come to me, here!’

  Shimon walked over to her in his little shorts and shirt, utterly trusting, and David’s heart bucked inside him. His son was so beautiful and vulnerable that he felt burningly protective. What did his own confusions and misgivings matter when it came to looking after this child, and making sure of the safety and happiness of his life?

  Part Five

  1967–9

  Chapter Forty-One

  October 1967

  ‘It’s only me, Mom!’

  Greta elbowed open Ruby’s front door, holding Francesca in her arms, and managed to shut it behind her with her foot.

  ‘Is that my granddaughter you’ve got there?’

  Ruby hurried through from the kitchen. She sounded welcoming, but Greta knew her jealousy and resentment were never far from the surface. Even though she put on a good front, Ruby was feeling it, having been left on her own. She’d never been one to be alone for long, and Herbert’s death and Greta and Marleen moving out so close together had left her feeling lonely and unwanted. She looked faded too, her hair a scrappy mixture of blonde and brown and scraped back. Ruby wasn’t making the best of herself.

  ‘Look, Franny – there’s your Nan!’

  The little girl pumped an arm in excitement, her round face all smiles.

  ‘God—’ Ruby said, gazing at her. ‘She really is the image of yer Dad. I see it more every time . . .’

  ‘I know,’ Greta said, smiling. ‘Even I can see it!’

  A photograph was all she had ever seen of her father, Wally Sorenson, but Francesca clearly favoured him in looks. She had a lovely round face with big blue eyes, fair hair which sat in pretty waves across the top of her head and a sunny temperament. Everyone loved her, and life had taught her to smile and bathe in the attention. Greta adored her.

  ‘If Wally was like her, I can see why you wanted to marry him, Mom,’ she said, going to put Francesca down. Ruby had acquired a little wooden playpen for when she came round.

  ‘Oh, don’t put her in there – let me have a hold! You go and put the kettle on, bab.’

  Ruby kept hold of the baby as they drank their tea. She gave Francesca a finger of bread to chew, and every few moments she kissed the top of the child’s head and Francesca chuckled at the tickly feeling.

  ‘She’s very like you were, you know,’ Ruby said.

  ‘Only better-tempered?’ Greta reached for the packet of sugar and dropped three lumps into her tea. She was weaning Francesca now she was six months old, but she still needed all the energy she could get.

  ‘You were all right. Only life was harder – me on my own and the war on. We didn’t have time for miniskirts and all this stuff you all go in for.’ The usual tone of self-pity crept into her voice.

  ‘Well, I’m on my own,’ Greta reminded her.

  ‘You’ve got plenty of help. I didn’t have the likes of Edie and Anatoli and all their odd friends dancing attendance.’

  Greta could feel the conversation running off the rails already. By ‘odd friends’ she knew Ruby meant people from the Society of Friends, the Quakers. She took Francesca to the Sunday Meeting quite regularly now with Edie and Anatoli. The Meeting was held mainly in silence, but children only stayed in for a little while and then went out and did activities, depending on their ages, and Greta carried Francesca out with them and lent a hand where she could. She had felt very shy going there at first, but everyone was very kind and she had made some new friends. Her Mom’s remarks about them stung. What did Ruby really know about it anyway?

  ‘Well, you had help too, from Frances Hatton. She was so kind, and you didn’t seem to be so fussy about whether she was a Quaker or not when you needed her!’

  ‘Huh,’ was all Ruby replied, busying herself with Francesca. Then she fired out the words that Greta always dreaded.

  ‘Look, bab – you really ought to move back in with me and not be living off them all the time. I’m ashamed to think of it, with you not working, and me here all on my own . . .’

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to tell you, Mom,’ Greta said quickly. She didn’t want this conversation, yet again, about her moving back. How could she explain how much she loved living with Edie and Anatoli? And she genuinely believed they enjoyed her living with them. She had found the parents she’d always wanted, but she could hardly say that to her Mom!

  ‘I’m going back to work – next week. Seasonal, for the moment, till Franny’s older. I’m going to do three days and Edie’s doing two. We’ll look after the kids the days we’re not working . . .’

  Ruby’s face darkened. ‘You mean Edie’s going to be looking after my granddaughter three days a week?’

  ‘Well, I’d ask you, Mom, but now you’re back on five days a week you’re not here to have her, are you?’

  ‘Well, some of us have to work don’t we, not just go in for a bit if fun when we feel like it? I don’t have a big house and a husband where I can take in all and sundry like Lady Bountiful!’

  ‘Well you’ve had kindness in your time, plenty of it!’ Greta flared. ‘And you could have hung on to it instead of mucking it all up with the way you’ve carried on. With my grandparents for a start!’

  ‘Oh don’t go on about that again, it’s water under the bridge,’ Ruby snapped, her cheeks flushi
ng. She struck a match, angrily and lit up. ‘And it’s Marleen you want to blame for that, not me.’

  Greta bit her lip, already regretting losing her temper. She knew her Mom’s marriage to Carl Christie had wrecked everything as well. But there was no point in keeping on.

  Instead she said, ‘And how is Her Majesty?’

  ‘Well the babby seems all right.’ Two months after Francesca was born, Marleen had had another baby boy, and Trevor had insisted they call him George after George Harrison. Ruby gave a chuckle suddenly. ‘Looks ever so like Trevor, he does!’

  ‘Poor little bugger!’

  ‘Well at least one of them looks like its Dad anyroad – I don’t see much sign of him in her!’ She nodded down at Francesca. They both laughed and things eased. ‘What you going to do about her knowing who her Dad is?’

  ‘Oh, she’ll have to know,’ Greta said. ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

  ‘You know, you’d be surprised,’ Ruby mused. ‘But Marleen seemed to be all right with him. Least, for the moment.’

  ‘Well, Trev’s got what he wanted. Lots of babbies.’ Greta drained her teacup.

  ‘You seen him?’

  ‘Not since that one time he came, early on.’

  He’d turned up when Francesca was a fortnight old and had been quite emotional when he saw his daughter, told Greta he was sorry and everything.

  ‘I expect he’s forgotten about her now he’s got another baby of his own,’ Greta said briskly, standing up to go. ‘Better be on my way.’ She lifted Francesca from Ruby’s reluctant arms. ‘I ’spect I’ll see you at work, Mom.’

  ‘Bring her round to see me, won’t you?’ Ruby said petulantly. ‘Don’t let her forget who her real Nan is.’

  Going back to work was very hard at first, even for two days. For the past six months her life had revolved round her little one, and Greta felt as if she was being torn away from her. To her surprise she found she had loved looking after her, washing and feeding and rocking her, in a way which she had never imagined for a moment in all the time she was trying to avoid having babies!