The Bells of Bournville Green

by Annie Murray

‘Please, young man—’ The doctor touched his arm for a moment. His face seemed to crumple in sympathy. ‘I cannot help you just now. Wait a little while.’

  ‘Doodi?’

  David jolted awake, hearing her voice. He was in the chair beside her bed. For the remainder of the night he had lain crushed up on the back seat of the car, woken often by discomfort and noises from outside. In his distress and lack of sleep nothing seemed real, as if he was swimming through a dream.

  When it grew light they had let him come in and sit by her now she was back from the recovery room. Her head was bandaged, her left arm and leg were each in a plaster cast and there were other dressings on her face, next to her left eye and down her left cheek. She seemed to be in a deep, drugged sleep. Again he dozed, dragged queasily to the surface again every few moments by the routines of the ward.

  But now she was waking, her weak voice reaching him. He leaned towards her.

  ‘Doodi . . . Doodi . . .’ It seemed to be all she could say.

  ‘I’m here . . .’ He reached under the sheet for her hand and found more bandages along her right arm. Her hand seemed to be unhurt and he held it, longing to climb into the bed beside her, for them to be at home so that they could hold each other.

  She managed to turn her head and he sat close so that he could look into her eyes. There were cuts on her face, and grazes. He had a primitive urge to nuzzle and lick them, as if he could give healing. She was looking urgently at him.

  ‘The baby . . . It’s not . . .’ Her distress was mounting. ‘It’s not there any more. They had to take it . . .’

  ‘It’s OK.’ He stroked her hand. At this moment he could feel nothing.

  ‘Shimon!’ Her eyes jerked open as if she had just remembered and she started trying to get up. ‘Oh my God – Shimon, my little Shimon, where is he?’

  ‘Don’t move!’ David stood up to restrain her. ‘You mustn’t get up, my love!’

  ‘But I must find him! My little boy, he is missing!’

  She was struggling with him, her voice becoming hysterical, and a nurse came running, seeing immediately what was wrong.

  ‘My boy!’ Gila sobbed. ‘I want my boy!’

  She knew, surely? David thought wildly in those seconds. Miriam had said that she saw Shimon dead. It was as if she had forgotten. And then he saw that perhaps it wasn’t true – it was all a mistake. Anything could be true. Nothing was normal or real.

  ‘We shall have to sedate her,’ the nurse said. ‘It will give her some relief. It is best.’

  Within a few moments they had given Gila an injection. David watched as her dark-lashed eyes closed, her face with its grazes and dressings relaxed and she was gone from him again, leaving him alone, still clasping her hand.

  I wish they would sedate me too, he thought.

  He sat with her for a time, then walked out, dazed, from the ward. Things seemed quiet now and more under control. He stood in the corridor for a few moments, at a loss. His mind would not work. He did not realize the extent of his shock.

  Shimon . . .

  At last he found someone who could help. A nurse showed him to the mortuary, where inside he was met by a man with a thin, sensitive face.

  ‘I need to see my son,’ David said. ‘Last night they could not tell me . . . Perhaps it is a mistake . . . Perhaps he is not here?’

  ‘Come this way,’ the man said, with deep gentleness.

  Within moments he was looking at the figure of a small boy lying cold and very still, under the harsh mortuary lights, still in tattered clothing, although he was wearing no shoes. The boy had thick, dark curls which were greyed with dust, a pale face, almost half obscured by bruising which spread in a creeping stain from the wound on the left side of his head. A thick pad of gauze was still taped to his head, though the bleeding had stopped.

  Recognition was instant. David knew the second he saw him that it was Shimon, despite the awful changes to his face. Every line of him, the angle at which his soft, bare feet lay splayed apart, his hands, the set of his body, was Shimon, whose tiny form he had known so intensely for the past eight years, and could not be any other being but Shimon.

  He fell to his knees beside the low trolley. He saw the attendant react for a second, as if to stop him, but then he stood back. Neither of them spoke. Very gently, David took his son’s body in his arms, pressing his dust-covered, bloodied form close to him. He heard himself groaning, sounds which came without his bidding at the feel of the tender, lifeless body in his arms.

  ‘Daddy’s here,’ he said, over and over again, rocking Shimon in his arms. ‘Don’t be afraid, your Daddy’s here, my little one.’

  After a time, he had no idea how long, the attendant came and touched him on the shoulder. Dazed, David stood up, letting go his hold on the boy.

  ‘I shall need to take him to Jerusalem,’ he said.

  Soberly the young man nodded.

  Afterwards he walked out of the hospital, shivering though it was already warm. There was a light breeze blowing litter across the parking lot. David had no idea what to do next. He wandered along the perimeter with no aim in mind, until he came to the end, where he was met by a wall. He stopped and stared at it as if he could not make sense of why he was there. Then he turned and sank down with his back to it. Dry, yellowed grasses and sprigs of fennel had struggled up through cracks in the asphalt. There was a stench of urine. David squatted against the wall, watching a parched fragment of newspaper rise in an arc on the breeze, then flutter again to the ground. He turned his face up to the sun, feeling its warmth stroking his cheeks as if caressing him.

  Only then did he begin to sob.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  There were frantic telephone calls for days between Annaliese, Aunt Miriam and the two mothers, Rachel Weissman and Edie, as the scattered family tried to take in the news. The truth they all dreaded to hear, that each one of them willed with all their being to be proved a mistake, gradually began to sink in. Shimon, their beautiful eight-year-old nephew or grandson, who had written them letters in his childish Hebrew and English, of whom each of them had smiling photographs on their tables and mantelpieces, was dead, his life taken by a bomb.

  Gila, it appeared, was not seriously wounded. She had a broken arm, leg and ribs, and many cuts, but she was healing. The other distressing news was that she had lost the baby. She had been four months pregnant when she went to Tel Aviv at the beginning of September.

  Greta heard Edie’s distraught voice when she finally managed to speak to David.

  ‘Oh love – oh my poor love,’ she kept saying, trying not to weep, to be strong for him. ‘Should I come over – I can come at once?’

  She was frantic with need to be with him and do something. Yet at the same time she didn’t want to leave Anatoli, and David advised her not to come. Anatoli needed her more, he assured her: he and Gila had plenty of help. After a few days Gila had been discharged from the hospital and was recuperating in Miriam’s apartment. David was staying there some of the time, but he was planning to shuttle between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to continue his studies. He advised Edie to stay where she was for the moment. There was very little space, Gila’s mother was coming down and none of them, including Edie, got on particularly well with Miriam.

  ‘He says he and Gila will try to come and see us when she’s better, maybe at Christmas,’ Edie told Anatoli, seeming slightly comforted. ‘It’ll do Gila good to have a break – a holiday somewhere else, once she’s recovered. Oh the poor girl, and poor David . . . He says he’ll feel better if he can get back to work . . .’ She broke down, now she was off the telephone. ‘I wish I could do more for them, I really do!’

  Greta’s heart ached for all of them. As if Edie hadn’t had troubles enough already! She was determined to be as helpful as she possibly could. She thought about David, his handsome face smiling down from family pictures of him with Shimon and Gila. Though she remembered him well from when they were children, he was like a foreigner now, rem
oved by distance and all that he had experienced. He had already seemed rather distant and godlike by the time he was eighteen, with all his thinking and studying. And she had always thought Gila sounded intimidating as well. But this tragedy brought them closer and she could feel it with them. They had lost their child and she hugged Francesca tightly. How precious her little life was!

  Janet came round as soon as she heard the news and was kind and comforting. Greta went to tell Ruby. When she went round to the house she found a man she had never met before, a stocky fellow, his bald head rimmed with a neat circle of dark hair, and leathery features which creased up into a friendly smile.

  ‘Mac – this is my other daughter, Greta,’ Ruby said. ‘And this is my little granddaughter, Francesca.’

  The man shook Greta’s hand. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow and he had strong, hairy forearms.

  ‘Hello there!’ He nodded towards Francesca. ‘Very nice,’ he said. He had a broad Scots accent and spoke awkwardly, as if he was not used to it, but he seemed friendly enough.

  ‘What brings you here?’ Ruby asked, hardly disguising her sarcasm. Then she took in the expression on Greta’s face. ‘Oh my God – what is it?’

  ‘Edie’s had some terrible news, Mom. It’s David’s boy, Shimon – he’s been killed by a bomb.’

  ‘A bomb?’

  ‘There were bombs planted in Tel Aviv. Gila was there with him.’

  She saw Ruby’s face change, turning first very grave, and then full of pity.

  ‘Dear God – poor Edie,’ she said.

  ‘Go and see her, Mom?’

  ‘Course . . .’ This was something which cut right through all her grudges, her envy of Edie. They’d been pals since they were fourteen. ‘Course I will.’

  On Saturday when they usually went to the shops in Selly Oak, Edie said she’d like to go up to Bournville instead.

  ‘It’s a nice day,’ she said bravely. ‘Let’s make a bit of a morning of it.’

  It was still warm, a mellow day, the sky blue with big puffy clouds sitting lazily above. Greta put Francesca in the pushchair and they set off up the hill with the shopping baskets hanging from the handle, Peter holding Edie’s hand.

  The Green in Bournville was like a warm, green haven and they did their shopping there, in the timber-framed buildings which ran along one side of the grassy space.

  ‘I don’t know why we don’t come up here more often,’ Edie said as they came out of the bakery with a loaf and Anatoli’s favourite, jam doughnuts. She was doing her utmost to be cheerful. ‘Now, Peter, you’ve been a really good boy so you can have an ice lolly.’

  Edie smiled, looking at Francesca, who was beginning to strain against the straps of the pushchair. She was a picture, her head a mass of golden curls. ‘I suppose her majesty could manage one as well. Tell you what – let’s all have one, shall we?’

  Peter chose a Rocket ice lolly and Francesca a Funny Face with chocolate nose and eyes. Edie and Greta had strawberry Mivvies. They went and sat on the benches outside the Rest House in the middle of the Green, facing the Day Continuation School, where each of them had spent a day a week having lessons from when they joined Cadbury’s until they were eighteen.

  ‘Ah – happy days,’ Edie said, looking fondly over at it. She seemed to find it soothing being here surrounded by lovely buildings, the old timbered Selly Manor, the Friends’ Meeting House, where she went every Sunday, and the Ruskin School, which had given her so much pleasure in developing her painting. But she added more thoughtfully, ‘Well, happy in some ways anyway.’

  ‘School days are supposed to be the happiest of your life, that’s what they say, isn’t it?’ Greta said.

  ‘Well that’s blooming nonsense for a start,’ Edie declared. ‘I couldn’t wait to get out of school. Oh no – these have been the happiest. With Anatoli . . .’ Her eyes filled suddenly. ‘Even now, with all this . . . Oh sorry, here I go again.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Greta said, moved. ‘I think you’re very brave.’

  ‘No—’ Edie shook her head. ‘I’m not at all.’

  As she spoke, the bells of the carillon above the junior school began to ring out one of their chiming tunes and Edie smiled, wiping her eyes.

  ‘I remember when David was little he was absolutely fascinated by that. He used to keep on and on about how many bells there were and how did it work and of course I could never remember. I don’t have a good head for facts like that. In the end I took him to see the man playing it. Have you ever seen it?’

  ‘No,’ Greta said.

  ‘It’s played by a keyboard called a Clavier which is wired up to the bells. David was allowed to have a little go and the man told him all about it. That was David – always having to know about everything and how it worked. I must take you to see it, mustn’t I, Peter? And you too, Franny!’

  They sat until the pretty, chiming tune had finished ringing across the Green. Greta noticed that France-sca’s hands and legs were thoroughly smeared with vanilla ice cream and she got up to clear her up.

  ‘Can we go to the park?’ Peter said.

  ‘I tell you what, why don’t we do that?’ Edie said. ‘Anatoli won’t be home until two.’ He was still struggling in for short periods when he could. ‘We can give the ducks the crust of this loaf.’

  They walked down the hill, following the stream until they reached the little boating lake where a couple of older boys were floating sailboats and other children were feeding the ducks and geese or being pushed slowly round by their chatting mothers.

  Edie handed Peter some bread and he went off to throw it for the ducks.

  They strolled round slowly in the warm sunshine, following Peter, but Greta began to notice that the buoyant mood Edie had managed to keep up so far was slipping and she became silent and sad. They stopped to watch Peter throw in the last of his bread, overarm, and the ducks rushed to reach it. Once more Edie’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘David used to do that. I always dreamed of seeing the two of them here together – Peter and Shimon . . .’

  She shook her head. There was no need to say any more.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Within a day of Gila moving from the hospital to Miriam’s apartment in Tel Aviv, David felt that he could stand it no longer.

  Her mother was also staying, and as the apartment had only two bedrooms, David was sleeping on a mattress in Gila’s room and Rachel Weissman slept on a couch in the living room. Night-time was the only chance he and Gila had to be alone without her mother or aunt fussing over her.

  Miriam already tried David’s patience. Her softer side had shown itself with Shimon, who had adored her, and David had never doubted her care for him, but in general she was a tough, bossy woman who had never married and was used to living alone and having her own way in everything. Her relationship with her nervy elder sister was quarrelsome and full of resentments of an intensity that David could never fathom. Gila had never been able to explain it either. Whatever Rachel said, Miriam had to contradict, had to be in charge of everything, and there seemed to be a power struggle going around Gila’s head all the time. It had enraged David before. Here they were, fortunate enough to be sisters, to have proper relatives when he had so few, and they couldn’t even manage to be civil to each other over the smallest of details! Now, after what had happened to his family, he found their self-absorbed quarrelling cruel and absurd.

  ‘Why don’t we just go home?’ he begged Gila one evening. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, the sound of angry female voices coming from the kitchen, Miriam’s powerful, like a foghorn, Rachel’s high and plaintive. A squabble seemed to have broken out over yoghurt, with no point to it that David could discern. It just made him loathe Israel more, with its loud, emotional people. Though he could see that the roots of their conflict and Rachel’s neuroses dated back further than anything he could possibly know about, at this time he didn’t care what they were or feel any sympathy. He was in too much pain himself
, an anguish which enveloped him and Gila totally and separately, only isolating them more from each other.

  Gila had become someone he scarcely recognized. She lay there day after day, with no energy, hardly speaking, locked in shock and grief. He couldn’t get through to her at all. And surely all these hysterics around her were not helping, he thought.

  ‘We can go back to our own place and you won’t have to put up with this all the time. We’ll sleep in our own bed together. You can rest until you’re better, with no pressure . . .’

  Gila’s face remained blank. ‘No. I must stay here.’

  ‘But why? I’ll look after you. We can be together.’

  He ached to have her at home. He had been back and forth twice now, trying to concentrate on his studies, to keep going. Facing the silent apartment had been terrible. There were Shimon’s toys, his swimming trunks wrapped in a towel, little winter boots still behind the door in the hallway, his bed with its blue and orange quilt, just as it had been before. He wondered whether he should just get rid of everything, bundle his son’s few possessions into a sack and dispose of them. But then he decided that he could not bear the apartment to look as if Shimon had never been, to be bereft of him. He was not ready for that to happen. And he knew Gila must come here first and see, and somehow say goodbye.

  More than once he woke in the night, convinced he had heard his son cry out, as if Shimon was there, sleeping in the next room. One night, still befuddled with sleep, he got up to check on him. He found the bed empty, and climbed into it, curling up, needing to capture the smell and feel of his small son, needing to be held himself. He fell asleep, tears wet on his face.

  If only Gila could come home, he thought, then slowly, slowly they could begin . . . They could try to find an idea of normal, if things could ever be normal again. They could have another child. As it was, everything seemed frozen, as if time had stopped when Shimon died.

  Each time he went back to Tel Aviv, hoping. But she would not come, would not speak to him about their lost children, or weep with him. Each time he came into the room he would find her lying much as he had left her, on her back, her dark brows two slender arcs across her pale forehead, her dark eyes looking up to the ceiling, a slight frown on her face. If he spoke to her about something ordinary – did she want some soup? was she warm enough or comfortable? – she would answer him in a detached way as if he was a stranger. It was the same with Miriam and Rachel. None of them could get through to her.