The Bells of Bournville Green

by Annie Murray

  I ought to see my family, she realized. Try and make it up with Marleen. She knew that as well as the arrival of David and Gila, she was having to prepare herself too for when Anatoli was no longer there. The cosy nest she had been taking refuge in all this time was never going to be the same. She couldn’t hide there for ever.

  When Greta came home from work now she was so affected by Gila’s intense, withdrawn presence that she would take Francesca off and play with her upstairs, sometimes taking her in to see Anatoli if he had not come down. Week by week he seemed more poorly and it wrung her heart to watch it. She wanted to spend all the time she could with him while he was still with them, yet she didn’t like the way she felt as if she was spending her time hiding at home now.

  But one afternoon just before Christmas she got home and found the house quiet. Edie was sitting near the fire with her knitting, with Francesca and her toys.

  ‘Oh!’ Greta said, as she put her head round the door. ‘On your own?’

  ‘Yes—’ Edie smiled, but Greta could sense the worry behind her cheerfulness. ‘They’ve gone into town for a bit. David went to see Dr Ferris this morning . . .’

  Greta was startled by how hard her heart started to thud, by her rush of tender concern for him. What on earth had got into her? She perched on the chair opposite. ‘There’s nothing wrong is there?’

  ‘Oh, no! Not – I mean he’s not ill. He just . . . Oh bother it, look – I’ve dropped two stitches . . .’ Distractedly she put her knitting down.

  ‘I’m happy really – very . . .’ Edie’s eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away, smiling at the same time. Greta waited. What on earth? Maybe Gila was expecting another baby. Perhaps that was why there had been a visit to the doctor.

  ‘It’s what I’ve wanted, all this time, but it still feels a bit of a shock . . . Especially with Gila being as she is, poor lamb . . . Things aren’t easy between them.’

  ‘Aren’t they?’ Greta asked. She hadn’t been sure with David and Gila. She knew they were grieving over their son’s death, that things did not seem warm between them, but as they spoke to each other in Hebrew she never understood their conversations.

  ‘But I think it will be for the best,’ Edie said, her face glowing. ‘Dr Ferris – Martin – says it will be possible for David to finish his medical training at the university here. So he’s decided to stay. They’re not going to live in Israel any more – they’re going to make their home here! And maybe if she’s here away from all the memories, we can help Gila get out of the state she’s in. I hope to goodness we can. The only thing is—’ Edie looked troubled. ‘He’s made the decision, but he hasn’t told Gila yet. You won’t say anything, will you?’

  ‘No of course not – it’s not my business,’ Greta managed to say, as the news sank into her like a horrible hard stone. She wanted to be pleased for Edie, but what she really felt was a turmoil of dread and a shameful fear that, if they stayed, things could never be the same again. It felt like the day that Marleen came home, only much worse.

  ‘That’s really nice for you,’ she said, forcing out the words. ‘You’ll all be together as a family.’

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  David had put off going to see Joe Leishmann. He knew he owed the Leishmanns a visit, but was deeply reluctant and didn’t like to ask himself why.

  Joe Leishmann owned a well-respected tailoring business near Five Ways. It was Joe and his wife Esther who had befriended David in those early, confused months when he began to learn about his real family and his Jewish identity.

  Joe and Esther had known David’s mother at Singers Hill Synagogue, after she had come to England to escape Nazi Germany, and they remembered David as a baby. They had helped him to piece his family together and find his father Hermann and Aunt Annaliese, and it was they who had encouraged him to go to Israel to work on a kibbutz. At that time the Leishmanns had meant the world to him and he had felt as if he was their protege, although he had gone against their wishes, and gone to a secular instead of a religious kibbutz.

  At first, once he was in Israel, he had written to them regularly to let them know how he was getting on. But as his life there had become busier and more permanent, he had written less and less, and he felt guilty.

  ‘You must come and meet them,’ he said to Gila. ‘They are people who have been very important in my life.’

  ‘All right.’ She nodded.

  They were sitting up in bed drinking tea. David had made it and brought it up, trying to keep things pleasant between them and establish some sort of homely routine. It felt like trying to hold back the tide.

  ‘They are good people – kind people.’

  ‘All right. I said all right.’

  She spoke with no tone, no emotion of wanting or not wanting, as she spoke of almost anything these days.

  A tight, explosive feeling built inside David. My wife! Where has my wife gone, the wife I loved? I have lost my children and my wife! But he pushed the feelings aside. To look at them was too terrible. He must keep his head down, his feelings down, and keep trying to hold things together for all their sakes. He could not allow himself to need comfort.

  But he glanced at her, her stick-thin wrist holding the cup close to her lips, her eyes staring ahead of her but not focused on anything, her expression blank. It was as if she was not there. Yet it was also as if she hated him.

  He only found courage to say something when they were on the doorstep of the Leishmanns’ gracious house in Edgbaston. It was a freezing day, like the ones David remembered when he first came here to visit, their breath steaming on the air. The house looked just the same, though he noticed that the white paint on the window frames was cracked and beginning to flake off.

  Gila was bundled up in layers of clothing, topped by the soft pink jumper Edie had knitted for her and a navy blue coat of Edie’s. Below it, her black-stockinged legs looked painfully thin. She had her hands in the coat pockets and was hunched up, her chin tucked in behind the roll neck of the jumper. David saw that it was wrong, her being here at all in this cold, grey country. He could only think of her in a place of blue sky, bright light, of colour. Here she seemed even more diminished and faded.

  ‘You will try and speak with them, won’t you? Be polite?’

  In his nervousness he sounded like a bossy uncle, and he cursed himself. But was it too much to ask? He had lost his son too, lost their other child. All he was asking was for her to try.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, without looking at him. She never looked at him now. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Aaah!’ Joe Leishmann cried on opening the door. He looked them up and down for a second, eyes twinkling with pleasure. ‘The wanderer returns at last! Come in, come in! And this is the lovely Gila! Welcome, welcome! Esther and I have been waiting for you.’

  Joe had scarcely changed, it seemed to David. Still the same round face, same black-rimmed spectacles and crumpled, amiable features. His hair was a little whiter, he was a fraction more stooped than when they had first met, that was all. The hall, too, seemed unchanged, and David found this reassuring.

  Joe steered Gila towards the living room, in his fatherly way, his arm round her shoulders. ‘My dear, you have been through such tragedy. A calamity – such a calamity! We have been weeping for you, for your little Shimon.’

  Edie must have told them everything, David realized. He had not thought to write, not after it all happened.

  He saw that Gila was struggling with tears and it tore at his heart. She had shown no emotion, it all seemed to be locked inside her, but Joe Leishmann’s all-embracing kindness had got through to her. David wanted to go to her, to put his arms round her, say, ‘Yes, my love, cry and weep, please. Let yourself feel, let us feel all our sorrow and be one together as we never are, not any more . . . Come back to me my wife, my love . . .’

  But they were met by Esther Leishmann. Gila composed herself with obvious effort and dragged a smile to her lips in a way that normally
she only managed for Anatoli or Peter.

  ‘Esther – at last, we have a chance to see these young pioneers!’ Joe said, gently steering Gila towards his wife.

  Esther Leishmann was getting slowly to her feet, and David was shocked by the change in her. Unlike her husband, who was ageing gradually and mercifully, Esther was much changed. The darting, bossy woman who David had first met over a decade ago looked faded and shrunken. He should have been prepared. Edie had warned him that Esther had suffered a stroke last year. She was recovering and seemed mobile, not disabled in any way, but he could see what a toll her illness had taken.

  ‘Welcome my dears,’ Esther said.

  She reached out and embraced Gila, holding her close like a child, stroking her back in unspoken sorrow and sympathy. David wondered if this would make Gila cry again, but when she stood back she said, ‘It is very nice to meet you,’ in her careful English, and she seemed grateful for Esther’s embrace. It was not something her own neurotic mother ever managed, David realized.

  ‘Now.’ Esther Leishmann stood before David. ‘Let me look at you.’ She reached up and stroked his cheek. ‘You have grown up into such a man. And you are still so very beautiful!’ She spoke to him with arch fondness. ‘You look like a true sabra. It is good to see you again, David. Sit, please, all of you. We shall take tea.’

  It was Joe Leishmann who brought the tea in: one tray with the silver teapot and cups, another with pastries and cake, plates and dainty knives.

  ‘I’m afraid these are from a shop,’ Esther said, shamefacedly, slicing into the sponge cake. ‘I have not been very well, and Joe is not the baker of the household. I shall be better, but in the meantime we are eating from the bakery down the street. It is not so bad, but not up to Drucker’s standards!’

  André Drucker had set up his Viennese patisserie in Birmingham in the early 1960s, to give people a taste of the cakes and coffee he remembered from his Austrian childhood, and Esther was a fan.

  David sat beside Gila on the settee in the elegantly furnished room. Joe and Esther each took a chair either side of the marble fireplace. Again, nothing seemed to have changed much, so far as David could remember. On the one hand he felt a little as if he had come home, yet he knew also how he had changed since he was last here! It was like stepping back into another life.

  Except of course that his wife was beside him and he could undo nothing: not the happy times, nor the frozen state they had reached now. But they could pretend, he thought. They would sit and pretend, for Joe and Esther, that despite their personal tragedy they were proud and thriving Israelis.

  But first he asked Joe about the business.

  ‘How is Leishmann’s Bespoke Tailors?’ he asked as Joe handed round the cups of tea and Esther watched him like a hawk and bossed him, ‘Careful now, you’ll spill it . . .’ or ‘Don’t overdo the sugar, Joe!’

  ‘Oh yes – it’s going along well. I have not retired since no one is going to force me – even though in two years’ time Esther and I will be seventy. Can you believe it?’

  ‘No!’ David said, though in Esther’s case that was less true.

  ‘And is Nadia still there?’ One of his fond memories of meeting Joe Leishmann was of his stormy Italian assistant, Nadia, and their amazing capacity for falling out with each other over almost every stitch that went into every garment. But Nadia had been a pretty, curvaceous, motherly woman who had been kind to David, and he thought how nice it would be to see her again.

  ‘Ah, no, Nadia has been gone some time. She and her husband moved away – to the west somewhere.’

  ‘Swansea,’ Esther corrected him. ‘She had relatives there and they went to live near the sea.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Joe was leaning forward, looking like a cuddly bear and scratching his head. ‘Now we have two girls – Madge and Doreen. They are good girls if they would only stop gossiping and get on with the job. God in Heaven—’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Never have I known two women who can talk so much. On and on . . .’

  ‘Madge is a good seamstress,’ Esther remarked.

  ‘She is,’ Joe had to agree. ‘Very fine. But dear God, the endless verbal torrent . . .’

  David sensed Gila trying to keep up with the conversation.

  ‘Now,’ Esther said. ‘Tell us your plans. You go back . . . When?’

  There was a pause. David tensed even further. He could not tell them, not now.

  ‘Esther is asking us when we are going home,’ he told Gila. If there were things she did not understand he said them quietly in Hebrew so she could keep up. She was nibbling at a piece of the sponge Joe Leishmann had cut for her. He let her answer, as it was not a complicated question and so that he did not have to lie.

  ‘I think we go – January,’ Gila said haltingly. ‘David has to go to . . . to school again . . .’

  ‘Back to your studies,’ Esther nodded approvingly. ‘Very good, very good.’

  The Leishmanns bombarded them with questions now, about Jerusalem, about the war, the army, the country in general. After Joe’s sympathy when they arrived, they did not mention Shimon, the explosion, the bomb which had torn their lives apart. They talked about everyday life, about their new apartment.

  ‘We have moved to a different place,’ Gila said. When there was a question that was easy to answer David looked at her. They had an understanding during that visit. As if both knew they had to be united in front of the Leishmanns because they were such good people, they liked them and felt they owed them a version of life which was hopeful. So they pretended together without having agreed to do so. They talked about life in Jerusalem and how they would go back and start again in a new place, continue the struggle to maintain the state of Israel, because that was what they knew the Leishmanns wanted to hear. They were so sure of its rightness, of Israel’s duty to survive at all costs. David would never mention to them his feelings after the Six Day War, the confusion and moral doubt that had assailed him even in victory.

  And he could not explain all the other things that died on the day he saw his son’s body in a hospital mortuary.

  So he knew that he had already lied with his answer to their first question, and that with every following question he answered there was an untruth built into it. He was not going back to Israel in January. Somewhere deep inside him, at first like chips of rock beginning to fall down a mountainside, the decision had begun to be made. When the bombs went off in the Mahaneh Yehuda market in Jerusalem in November, with every border skirmish which meant that he, an Israeli, was forever the occupier in someone else’s land, that he and his loved ones would never be safe from threat and violence while this was the case, the rocks had grown bigger and gained momentum. And when he saw again the green calm of England, when he sat in the peace of the Meeting House in Bournville and heard the chimes ringing across the Green, which spoke to parts of him long buried, he knew he had come home.

  But he had scarcely put these deep instincts into words even for himself. And at this moment, for Gila, for the Leishmanns, he must pretend that his future was as an Israeli, that he and his wife would return bravely to that parched, precarious land and start again.

  He was hanging in the balance between two lives.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  As Christmas drew near it was becoming impossible for David and Gila to pretend any more. Gila’s state of mind, instead of improving, was getting worse and none of them knew what to do.

  Edie was so worried that she confided in Greta, and she didn’t hide her concerns from Anatoli, although he was ill.

  ‘She’s just not right,’ Edie said one afternoon when she and Greta were making little Christmas buns with Peter and Francesca. ‘I mean she’s up there now, all on her own. She doesn’t do anything – just sits there. I know she’s pining. I can hardly stand to think how she must feel, losing her little boy and the baby. But it’s more than that.’ She whispered above Peter’s head. ‘Anatoli thinks she’s having a complete breakdown.’

  ‘O
h, Mom!’ Peter cried indignantly. ‘Franny’s gone and messed it all up!’

  Francesca was puddling her hands in the cake mix as if she was making mud pies. Peter, who was rather a neat child, was not impressed.

  ‘Come on, Franny-Panny,’ Edie said, lifting her over to the sink to wash her hands. ‘I think you’ve done your share. Let Peter finish them off now.’

  Francesca, who was just as happy to play in a bowl of bubbly water in the sink, splashed about contentedly.

  ‘I spoke to Martin about her,’ Edie said. ‘He’s been ever so kind over the years . . . He said he thought Gila ought to go to one of those mental doctors. I said to him, it’s almost as if she’s shell-shocked, and he said yes, that was how it was. She’s had too many shocks all at once for her system to stand it, what with the bombs and losing her children – and on top of that she’s in a strange country where she barely speaks the language . . .’

  ‘Oh,’ Greta said doubtfully. It wasn’t something she knew anything about, but she could see Gila was in a desperate state. She hardly left her room now, and when she did she was so withdrawn it was as if she had closed down completely, despite David’s attempts to reach her, which it wrung Greta’s heart to watch. ‘Well maybe she should then.’

  Edie gave a long sigh. ‘Anatoli says he thinks Martin’s right. But when I spoke to David about it he said Gila’s mother is frightened of doctors – especially that sort. She’s made Gila frightened too and she won’t go near them.’

  Greta thought the idea seemed frightening too.

  ‘I thought they were for people who were really mad,’ she said. ‘You know – frothing at the mouth and that . . .’

  Edie turned, her eyes troubled. ‘That’s what I used to think. But Martin says that sometimes now they just let you talk. Or there are treatments they can have . . .’