The Bells of Bournville Green

by Annie Murray

  Raised voices came from upstairs, David shouting, distraught, shrieking and sobbing from Gila, then moments of silence between as if the raw pain of each outburst was forced out, jagged, not flowing.

  ‘Oh God,’ Greta said.

  ‘It’s been awful,’ Edie wept. ‘I don’t know how we got through the day. Gila barely said a word, she was so down and closed in on herself, and I could see David was getting more and more upset and not knowing what to do. He’s so hurt and she’s in terrible pain . . . I just don’t know how to help them . . . And my poor Anatoli’s been so sick and wretched . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry I went out,’ Greta said miserably. ‘I’ve been no help.’

  ‘No – you’ve got to see your family. I’m glad you went.’ Edie rallied herself. There were more sounds from upstairs. ‘Look, let’s go in the kitchen and make a cuppa. I can’t interfere. They need to do this on their own.’

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  They made tea and sat drinking it at the kitchen table. About twenty minutes passed. Edie asked Greta about her day, but all the time they were tensed, listening for sounds from upstairs.

  ‘Won’t they wake Anatoli?’ Greta said.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Edie, all nerves, kept chewing at the ends of her fingers. ‘He’s weak – I could scarcely rouse him to get him to have a drink. I’ll go and see in a minute.’

  A moment later she said, ‘I don’t know if I’m doing the wrong thing. Maybe I should go up there and see if I can help . . . I don’t want to interfere – I mean it’s high time they had it out, but Gila seems so . . . Well, I don’t think she’s very well. But she won’t hear of having a doctor.’

  Greta stared at the pale blue top of the table. She thought she heard a door open and close upstairs and things seemed to have quietened.

  Then they heard someone coming downstairs, and a moment later David appeared. He looked exhausted, and distraught. Edie got to her feet immediately.

  ‘Oh love, how is she? Are you all right?’

  David sank down at the table. He seemed stunned and his face was pale, dark rings round his eyes. The sight of him moved Greta desperately, but she wondered if they would rather talk in private.

  ‘Look, I’ll go, shall I? See to Francesca?’

  ‘No, stay – please.’ David spoke with such conviction that she sank back down, glowing with gladness at his including her, even in such a sad situation.

  ‘She says she’s going to sleep.’ David wiped his hands over his face. ‘She’s getting ready for bed.’

  ‘Here, love—’ Edie poured tea for him, stirred in sugar. ‘Get that down you.’

  Greta watched David’s expression as he took the mug of tea and cupped his hands round it as if longing for comfort. He looked so hurt and bewildered and boyish all at once, and her heart seemed to melt at the sight of him.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do,’ he said, staring ahead of him. ‘What to do, what to say, how to be with her. I can’t handle it. I’ve no idea who she is any more.’

  ‘She’s in a terrible state, love,’ Edie said gently. ‘I really don’t think you should be trying to manage it all on your own any more. Why don’t you let me call a doctor – not just anyone. We could ask Martin to come and see her . . .’

  David was shaking his head. ‘She won’t. I’ve begged and begged her.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Her mother. She’s got an obsession, a phobia about doctors of any kind, but especially anyone in the psychiatric line. She’s got a history – she’s not an easy woman at all – well, you remember.’ Edie had met Rachel Weissman several times when she and Anatoli had visited Israel.

  ‘Yes – she always struck me as nervy,’ Edie admitted. She had told Greta that she found Gila’s mother quite strange and abrasive.

  ‘She had some kind of depressive illness in her youth, before they left Germany. I gather she was put in an asylum there for a time. I don’t know what happened but she’s been terrified of anything like that ever since.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ Greta said.

  ‘She hasn’t had an easy life altogether.’

  ‘There can’t be many people in Israel who have,’ Edie said.

  ‘She wants to go home.’ David brought out the words in a hard, flat voice.

  ‘What – straight away?’ Edie did not manage to hide her relief completely. ‘Have you told her – that you want to stay?’

  ‘That’s what set it all off.’ He put his head in his hands for a second, then looked up at them again. ‘I can’t go back there, I’m certain of that now. Not after all this. But she won’t hear of staying.’ There was an angry edge to his voice as he said, ‘She wants to go home, and she says she doesn’t care if I go with her or not.’

  ‘But if she went,’ Edie probed him gently, ‘you’d have to go with her, surely?’

  David leaned back and gave a long, sad sigh.

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  There was little noise from Francesca in the pushchair, and Greta went out to take her up to bed.

  ‘Shall I look in on Anatoli?’ she asked Edie.

  ‘Yes love, if you would.’

  All seemed quiet at the back of the house where David and Gila’s room was. She imagined Gila in bed, her hair startlingly black against the pillow and her sad face.

  Anatoli was in a deep sleep, on his back. Greta straightened the sheet, caressing it over Anatoli’s chest. He looked so old now, especially in sleep, his cheeks sunken, hair thinner, and his left arm, outside the bedclothes, pitifully bony. He had had a sick, draining day. She wanted to stroke his head, his arm, she loved him so much, but she didn’t want to disturb him.

  ‘Don’t die, you lovely man,’ she whispered, tears filling her eyes. ‘Don’t leave us!’

  In a turmoil of feeling she knelt by his bed and let the tears run down her face. She didn’t know who she was crying for most, for Anatoli, for David and Gila’s pain and grief, for herself, knowing that this man who had been like a loving father to her was slowly dying.

  Wiping her eyes, she got up and went downstairs again. David and Edie were still at the table.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Edie asked anxiously, seeing her tear-stained face.

  ‘Yes – he’s still fast asleep.’ She went to the sink. ‘I’ll just wash up the cups before I go up.’

  ‘I’d better turn in,’ David said. ‘Thanks – both of you.’ When Greta turned to say goodnight, he was looking across at her with a slight smile.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said softly, and watched him leave the room, feeling as if he was taking her heart with him.

  As Greta rinsed the cups, Edie sat in silence, pulling her hairpins out until her long hair untwisted down her back. Slowly she began to tie it in a loose plait. She had just begun saying something when the kitchen door burst open and David appeared again. He looked frantic.

  ‘She’s not there – in bed. I don’t know where she is – she’s gone!’

  The first thing that came to them was to run out of the house after her.

  ‘Where would she go?’ Edie panted as she and Greta hurried along together, following David towards town. The road was deadly quiet and ice crystals could be seen forming on the pavement in the light from the street lamps. Greta felt the cold air stinging her nostrils. After a few moments she and Edie slowed to a walk.

  ‘I s’pose there’s no point in us all running after her in the same direction,’ Edie said. ‘If anyone can catch her up it’s David. Unless she’s gone a different way. What can she be thinking of? There are no trains running or anything.’

  ‘I don’t s’pose she’s thinking straight at all,’ Greta said.

  ‘Perhaps we should have gone another way?’ Edie stopped. ‘I mean where on earth would you go? She could have gone in any direction. She doesn’t really know the way because she’s hardly been out since she’s been here . . . Honestly, the state she’s in, I knew we should have phoned Martin . . .’

  They decided
to walk back and check whether Gila had already returned home, or was wandering nearby in distress. After they had walked some way along the deserted streets of Selly Oak, they went back to the house. Edie ran up to the bedroom, but came down shaking her head.

  ‘No sign of her. I’m going to call the police. And I think we’d best wait here in case she comes back.’

  Edie telephoned the police station, and together she and Greta relit the fire in the living room. Edie went to look in on Anatoli, and then they sat up to wait.

  ‘It’s awful, this sitting, isn’t it?’ Greta said as they sat staring into the flames. All she could think of was David, her mind following his frantic quest through the streets. ‘She could be anywhere by now.’

  The clock on the mantelpiece ticked deafeningly. The hour from eleven to midnight seemed to take three. As the hand moved round to half past midnight, Edie said,

  ‘Look, love, you go to bed and I’ll wait up. There’s no point in us all being exhausted is there?’

  Greta shook her head. ‘I’m not leaving you with all this! I couldn’t sleep if I tried!’

  As they waited the silence took on the echoey strangeness of the small hours of night, when tiny noises sound exaggerated and you can start to imagine things, so that at first, when they heard footsteps on the fine gravel outside the house they both thought for a moment they were imagining things.

  ‘Hark—’ Edie held her hand up. ‘What’s that?’

  They both rushed to the front door. David and Gila came in out of the cold. As they came through the door he automatically put his hand on her shoulder to guide her and Greta saw her shake him off violently. Gila had clearly been weeping and seemed completely overwrought. Not saying a word to anyone, of either explanation or apology, she tore up the stairs.

  ‘Right,’ Edie said. ‘That’s quite enough of all this. I’m telephoning Martin Ferris – now.’

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  It was comforting to hear Dr Ferris’s car braking in front of the house. His tall, lean figure gave off such a sense of calm and reliability.

  ‘She’s going to be so angry,’ David was saying agitatedly as he led Martin Ferris into the living room. He was beside himself with worry. ‘She doesn’t trust anyone, even if I say it’s a friend.’

  ‘Well, it’s got past anything we can deal with, love,’ Edie said.

  Martin Ferris took off his hat and coat and laid them on the arm of the sofa. ‘You think she’s awake?’

  ‘We’ve heard her moving about,’ Edie said. ‘This is ever so good of you, Martin. I’m so sorry – Christmas and everything.’

  ‘Not at all. You say she ran off?’

  ‘She went to the station at Selly Oak,’ David explained. ‘For some reason she thought it would make sense to follow the railway line into town. Luckily it’s quiet, of course. She got as far as the university and she was scared, I think, and came up on to the road again, so I caught up with her eventually.’

  ‘Good Lord. I’d better go up and take a look. Will you warn her I’m here?’

  ‘I’ll come up,’ Edie said.

  Greta found herself alone with David.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said wretchedly, turning to face the fire. ‘She’ll never forgive me for this.’ He stood leaning on the mantelshelf, looking down into the glowing coals. After a silence, he said, ‘How can you be so close to someone, love them so much, then be so utterly far away as if they’re a stranger?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Greta said helplessly. ‘I’ve never had much luck with any of it really.’

  David turned to her, managing a faint smile for a moment. ‘Well, that’s honest, anyway.’ Distractedly he looked up at the ceiling. ‘Dr Ferris is such a good man. I hope she can see that.’

  Edie came back looking solemn. ‘Well, he’s in with her. She didn’t want to see him, but as he was standing there she didn’t have a lot of choice. I told her he’s a family doctor, nothing else.’

  There was nothing for it but more waiting. The clock gave a faint chime on the quarter hour, half past two, a quarter to three. After half an hour, Martin Ferris came down. David sprang to his feet.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Martin held his hand up. ‘I’ve sedated her, with her permission, of course. She’ll sleep now. I know it’s ridiculously late, but can we talk for a few moments?’

  ‘I’ll make more tea,’ Edie said, and Greta made as if to help.

  ‘It’s all right, you stay there, love.’

  There didn’t seem to be any question of anyone going to bed. They were all far too keyed up. Greta sat quietly as the men talked.

  ‘I just want to get a few things straight in my mind.’ Martin Ferris sat down on the other side of the fireplace, facing David. Greta was always struck by the length of his limbs, the boniness of his face, which was fascinating rather than handsome.

  ‘My first thought when I saw her was that she could do with a spell in hospital: somewhere like Hollymoor . . .’

  David started to shake his head, looking aghast.

  ‘I know she has a horror of anywhere psychiatric. But you do realize she’s in rather a bad way, don’t you? I mean I should expect both of you to be, after all that’s happened.’

  Martin gave David a long, penetrating look. Greta remembered Janet and Edie’s conversations about their men, the nightmares, all they had seen in wartime haunting them. Martin knew exactly what he was talking about.

  ‘Tell me—’ He leaned back the chair. ‘It would help to know a bit more about your wife’s background: mother, father, past events. The family moved to Israel – from where?’

  ‘Germany,’ David said. ‘Düsseldorf.’

  ‘Ah,’ Martin Ferris said meaningfully. ‘Does that mean . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ David corrected him. ‘They came before the war. No – they hadn’t been through any of the camps or anything. They made aliyah in 1933, went to live in Tel Aviv when her mother was about seventeen. The father was an architect, Bauhaus trained. They could see what was beginning to happen under Hitler and they had thought of emigrating anyway. Gila’s mother got married – to an engineer – just as the war broke out, and had Gila within the year. Her husband was killed two years later, working on a site in Haifa. A building collapsed. Gila’s mother was left alone with her, of course. She decided she’d like to be part of kibbutz life so she went to Hamesh – the kibbutz where we met – just after it started in 1950. Gila grew up there. Her mother is not the easiest of women. She has bouts of depression, paranoia at times, but I think her troubles had already started before.’ He told Martin about the depression, the spell in the asylum in Düsseldorf.

  Martin nodded. ‘So there’s an unstable mother . . . Any signs before this, would you say?’

  David hesitated. He thought of the night he had come home from Sinai, of other times when her emotions had to him seemed overwrought. He had put his reactions down to his Englishness, his maleness. Gila had always had a fiery temperament. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’

  ‘And then this double blow – the bombs, your son . . .’

  ‘She was pregnant at the time. We lost that child as well.’

  David spoke abruptly and pain flickered in his face. The conversation put Martin Ferris in the role of a father confessor, and it was stirring up David’s emotions, as if he would have liked to let go and weep.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Martin said gently. He sat quietly for a moment, obviously thinking.

  ’She seems very clear that she wants to go home.’

  ‘She hates it here. I thought it would give us a chance to get away from it all, to see things afresh . . .’

  ‘But instead it has been just one more shock, another disorientating change?’

  As he spoke Edie came in with a tray of tea and started to hand the cups round.

  ‘Yes,’ David said. ‘I can see now that it’s been too much for her. Now it feels as if she is like an animal in a trap, trying to escape.’

  ‘And you?’ Martin stirred h
is tea. ‘How has it been for you?’

  David looked down and Greta could see him fighting his emotion again.

  ‘Important,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ He looked up suddenly, almost defiantly. ‘I can’t go back there.’ He gave a small shudder. ‘No – it’s tainted now – all of it.’

  Martin gave him a long sad look.

  ‘You know you’ll have to let her go?’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s psychiatric treatment she needs. She needs lots of time to grieve in a place where she feels at home. And Israel is her home . . .’

  The words ‘even if it can’t be yours’, and all that implied, were left unspoken.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  No one tried to talk Gila out of going home. It was obvious that there was no point, and the fact that Martin, a doctor, said she ought to go convinced all of them that it was the right thing for her health.

  It was only David who really knew that the marriage was over, yet he even tried at first to convince himself that things could get better.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Edie said. ‘When she’s gone back and had more time to recover, you can go and join her again, love, perhaps start again – have another baby . . .’

  Once she knew she was going back to Israel, Gila was a little calmer, and they saw glimpses of the sweet-natured woman she could be when well and happy. But she was very distant from them and showed no signs of affection to David or sense that he was her husband and part of her future – or even of her past. It was as if she had cut the past off completely, could not bear anything to do with it, and all she could think of was getting on the next plane to Tel Aviv.

  The day she left, when David was to travel to London with her, Greta saw Gila for the last time, in the hall as Greta was putting on her coat and scarf to go to work.

  ‘I hope you have a good journey,’ she said, speaking slowly and clearly. She had never got to know Gila at all, and could not think of anything else to say, except, ‘It has been very nice to meet you.’