His face had reddened. It was not in his nature to justify himself, neither to man nor woman, especially at such length. But it was part of him to be just, and he suppressed much of his anger lest it lead to a state where he could not be so.
Judy’s shrug was a milder reaction than Pam expected from someone of her views. But there was more to her response than the glimpse of a protected existence for her and the children. The picture of her leaving was desolation indeed to Pam, who knew it had always been possible to wake up one morning and find her packing before final quittance. Now it wouldn’t be, mainly because the reality of her departure with the children had also been unthinkable to Tom, who had handled its prevention in such a way that everyone had thought they alone were responsible for winning the skirmish.
Later in the evening while Judy was taking a bath she said to him: ‘I’ll stay with her tonight. I think she needs me. Is that all right by you?’
He nodded.
18
When the baby was born Tom felt he was present at the birth of himself. Clara had described him, on his own first appearance, as having fine reddish hair matted on a fragile skull. Lips pouted and arms waved, and her small nose was like his mother’s on the photograph. They called her Rachel.
He had explored the antique shops in The Lanes for a cradle befitting the status of his daughter and firstborn, but finding nothing to suit, they had gone out together and bought a utilitarian new one from a department store.
While Pam was still in the hospital he had overheard Hilary say ‘Mum!’
‘What?’
‘Who do you love most – Pam, or Tom?’
He never heard the answer. He would have closed the door himself if she hadn’t slammed it, not wishing to know, or to pick up any evasions. No one should be called upon to answer such a question, though if children asked, then you had to find one. Children see everything. They had observed him go into Judy’s room a few nights ago, and though they had said nothing he knew that the question as to whom she loved most was their way of telling Judy that they weren’t as blind as she might in her new life have grown to believe and hope. It had been once only, and he had gone afterwards to his own bed. But one of the children had got up to get a drink of water, he supposed, and eternal curiosity had pulled at them. He had come back from the hospital, and Judy had put supper on the table.
‘How is she?’
‘A real live daughter. All sound in wind and limb.’
She didn’t seem joyful, or even much interested, and perhaps her mood made what followed even easier. ‘Another female in the house!’
‘Suits me,’ he said, ‘very much.’
‘Eat, then,’ she told him.
‘And you?’
She lit a cigarette. ‘I’ve had mine.’
But she sat close by, and when he poured wine she reached for his glass and drank. He stood up to get another glass from the cupboard, but she held his wrist firmly. ‘I’ll drink from yours, if you don’t mind.’
He refilled it. ‘I don’t.’
‘I haven’t thanked you yet,’ she said, ‘have I?’
He smiled at her strange mood. What could she mean? He had taken Hilary and Sam to look at ships in Shoreham harbour, and on recognizing an old face had been able to get them on board.
‘There’s no convincing you, is there?’ she said with a tenderness he had only seen her use with Pam.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But what do you think you have to thank me for?’
‘That’s better. You know very well what I mean.’ She crushed a piece of cheese on to some bread. ‘You’ve done such good things for me, and for the kids especially. I think you’re a nice person.’
He felt pleasure at this, till he realized it couldn’t be true. Then he thought he had better consider it as true enough, if only to be fair to her. ‘It makes me happy to hear you say so.’
‘I have to,’ she said, ‘for my own self-respect.’
‘Oh.’ He hoped she would let the matter go.
‘I mean it. You’re really all right.’
He couldn’t resist saying: ‘Even if I am a man?’
She laughed. ‘We live, and sooner or later learn.’
‘Yes, we certainly do that, if we try.’
‘From each other,’ she said, ‘but not all that much from ourselves, do we?’
‘You may be right.’ He drank half the wine, then passed the glass back to her. She stood up unsteadily in the overlit kitchen. He had made sure there were brilliant lights all over the place, every corner vividly seen. When she or Pam put only a couple of wall-lights on he became silent and sleepy. He thought she was about to fall, so he held her closer than he had intended, softened breasts against his shirt, and wine-tasting lips pressing at him.
Afterwards she said: ‘I like having a man come into me now and again.’
‘You came as well.’
‘I know. Who taught you how to do that?’
The bad dream made him sweat. He wondered how to get out of it. ‘I’m glad I was able to help.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to worry. We shan’t make a habit of it, though I wouldn’t need to think like this, and neither would you, if we were able to face the truth.’
He touched her full body, and stopped himself saying that he loved her. For the moment he did. But the truth was more complicated. It was like fire. You touched it at your peril. ‘I can’t be treacherous,’ he said. He already had, and knew it, but his mark of affection proclaimed innocence, which ordinary sense told him might be possible.
She guessed his inner debate. ‘It’s only a way of getting to know each other.’
He smiled, wanting to agree. He did so. He stroked her breast, as if his touch was sufficient to let her know he was near to her, and to explain all she might find puzzling about him.
‘Why don’t you say something?’ she asked.
‘I was wondering whether it’s possible to love two people at the same time.’
She pulled him close, and almost robbed him of breath. ‘No, it isn’t,’ she said between her sobs, ‘and don’t I know it?’ She was silent, and then: ‘Of course it bloody well is!’
19
Pam came home from the hospital, and no longer belonged to him. He had expected her not to, he said, at such a time. It ought not to be difficult to accept, she answered, because she never had. Belonged to him, she meant. She never had belonged to anybody. He laughed. It was only a manner of speaking, of course. Perhaps so, she said, but she was her own woman and he, she didn’t mind supposing, was his own man. If life was to go on, and for her part it certainly was, that’s how it would be.
Love was not a matter of belonging to anyone, he mused on one of his walks by the sea, but of mutual protection whenever necessary, which must never become onerous. Dependence grew, and obligations developed. They were bound to. There was responsibility, and no freedom except what was earned by unremitting though diffident attention. He could do no more, and sensed that she didn’t want him to do less, either.
She fed Rachel by the window that looked out to sea. The primal tug at her nipple was pleasant. The fine hand and warm fingers at the flesh of the breast, and the small face already so alert, made her own smile impossible to hold back. It was a smile such as no other could be.
The light calmed and fascinated Rachel, and after her first slake she would stare at any pattern that danced or dazzled. When they occasionally did not, her head turned back to resume feeding, but her eyes flickered around as if to make sure no bogyman or shadow would appear unbidden. Hilary held her finger, and Rachel took it while she fed, her hand gripping and relaxing as the milk went in.
‘I don’t know what you find to boggle at,’ Judy remarked when Sam looked on. ‘You’ll never be feeding a kid, and that’s for sure.’
‘I know I won’t.’ He had passed his eleven-plus, and went to the local grammar school. Hilary would follow the same path in a year, because Tom had worked it
out that way. He took Sam to the barber every month so that his hair was kept short and parted. Sam polished his shoes every morning, and his clothes were neat. Maybe it won’t last, Tom thought, but let the future look after itself. Judy was amused at her son’s self-absorbed industriousness, only critical of Tom’s regime when Sam seemed less connected to her than in his former outspoken days. But she thought such a change would have come anyway.
‘Don’t sound so sorry about it,’ she said to Sam, ushering them into the kitchen for their suppers. ‘Then you can go to your rooms and do a bit more homework before sleep time.’
After putting Rachel to bed Pam was exhausted. ‘She drains me.’
‘They all do,’ Judy replied. ‘It never stops, one way or another.’
‘I remember it from before.’ She went from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other – a wicked see-saw impossible to jump from. But that’s how she was, feeling no guilt about it, nor any particular wish that it would end.
‘We did the same to our mothers, I expect.’
Tom was setting the table in the dining-room for their supper. The large oil painting of his Uncle John was back above the mantelshelf, but the piano had gone so as to make more space. It was the mainstay room in which they could eat, live, or study.
She fed Rachel. If she threw her out of the window would she die? I dropped her. I was looking at the view while getting some fresh air. She moved. She slipped from my hands. Terrified at the nearness of disaster, and full of love for her daughter, she shut the window with a bang, then held her gently to stop her crying. She recalled a similar urge with Edward, wanting to end it all, even then. But at least now she knew what she was doing, or what she was not going to do.
‘Is this life everything?’ she said to Judy the following day, when the sun shone full into the large room.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it can’t be, can it?’
Judy put her arms around her. ‘You’re insatiable.’
‘I mean, it’s just not possible.’
‘What more do you want?’ There was a tone of exasperation in her voice. ‘You could live on your own and be a rag-picker, if you liked. Or you could do the Open University. Or you might try going into industry – whatever that means. There isn’t much, unless you want to join the army, or be a stunt-rider on the Wall of Death. Of course, we could get a loan and run a boarding house, or manage a pub in Cornwall, or open a boutique like everybody else. Life’s short. Options are limited. It’s too early to go around the moon on a camel and write a book about it. Anyway, you’ve got a lovely kid, and you’re in love with Tom. You’re not supposed to be on this dissatisfaction kick.’
She was in the mood to say whatever she felt. ‘I’m in love with you, as well.’
‘I know, and that’s marvellous, but don’t tell me too often, because Aunt Judy’s got her own sales-and-wants column roving around inside her. You’ll feel better when Rachel’s a year or two old. I love you as well, but it can’t mean as much as your love for Tom and Rachel, and sooner or later you might have to choose between me and them.’
‘There are too many damned choices.’
‘So there ought to be.’ Judy took a bottle of red wine from the drinks cupboard, fixed in the corkscrew, and raffishly winked at her as she pulled. ‘This will help us to relax.’
‘When I was with my husband,’ Pam said, sipping the wine, ‘and thought I could never get away from him, a story kept coming to me, repeating itself over the years. Funny how I’d forgotten it, and it suddenly springs on me again now. I must have dreamed it more than once, and the scene built itself up when I concentrated hard to pull it together. A heavy plank of wood was floating down a river in flood. At one end the husband stood, and on the other, the wife. Both wanted to get off and save themselves, either from the flood or from each other, or both. If the husband jumped first, the plank would tip and the wife would probably drown, and he didn’t hate her so much that he wanted to kill her. If the wife leapt free the husband’s end would go and he would drown, and she didn’t despise him sufficiently to want his death. They passed the occasional sandbank or overhanging tree, when it might have been possible for one or the other to have made a grab for it. But neither could jump. And they were coming to a five-hundred-foot waterfall. Only a miracle could save them. If not – over they’d go.’
‘Sounds familiar,’ Judy said. ‘But go on.’
‘Well, during the time when the plank was floating, they could have moved to the centre and got closer to each other. They could have then discussed matters with regard to jumping together, so that both would have been saved – or at least had a chance. But the torrent made them unwilling and afraid to move. They thought the effort wasn’t worthwhile, because they’d be able to jump free at any moment, and it wouldn’t have been necessary to get close anyway. It was obvious they should never have shared that floating plank, no matter what they thought they were escaping from. But they had, and that was that. It was called a romantic story, which was bound to have a tragic ending. That’s how the woman saw it, but she didn’t tell him. How he saw it, she wasn’t much interested, because he was no longer there to ask in any case. They had leapt from the plank half-way down the waterfall, neither of them thinking of the other. They had gone their separate and individual ways to death, which were more or less the same except that in every kind of distance they were very far apart. They missed the sound of the river, and the passing moments of tormenting indecision, and the noise of that fatal waterfall getting nearer and nearer. It made their life exciting, but was absolutely intolerable at the same time.’
She was silent for a while, then Judy said: ‘Does all this mean you’re going back to your husband, after all?’
‘No. That’s unthinkable. Finished. But in five years I don’t want to feel like that with Tom.’
Judy refilled their glasses. ‘You won’t, though I understand your fears. Tom’s the sort who won’t let that happen. Plenty of knock-about life is in store for you yet, I’m sure.’
‘But will he ever feel like that with me?’
‘I don’t expect so, but who knows? None of us is God.’
20
The choice came to Pam as a blinding revelation one night after Rachel was in her cot and Judy had gone out with the kids to the cinema. She looked over his shoulder at the Hebrew grammar and said: ‘You’ll never know the language properly until you go to Israel to live, and hear it spoken all around you.’
‘I don’t suppose I will. Yet I went into the local synagogue last week and heard it there.’
‘That’s liturgical. I mean as an everyday language.’
On most Friday nights a solitary candle burned on the dining-room table. The children liked it, and even Judy was tolerantly quiet. Tom wore a black cap hardly visible on the back of his head, and hurriedly murmured a prayer. He opened a bottle of wine and, to the children’s delight, poured a glass for everyone. That was the extent of his Sabbath.
‘Haven’t you ever thought about it?’ A recollection forced the question into her mind, of seeing the preacher clearly from ten years ago, in the chapel she had wandered into like a sleepwalker. She had found comfort in the strange words, and had gone back love-sick week after week to hear this unprepossessing yet mysterious man tell of the virtues of ancient and modern Israel.
Tom admitted that he had considered a visit to his second country, but so many things had happened to divert him from such an idea.
‘I don’t mean a visit,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to live there? After all, your mother was Jewish, her mother was Jewish before her, and so was her mother. It would make sense, absolutely.’
He stood up and smoked a cigarette by the mantelshelf. She looked at him: fragile, vulnerable, uncertain. From the beginning she had known all too well what he must do, and so had he, but he had chosen to deceive himself so as to let her be the one to tell him. By doing so she was being more herself than she had ever been.
She had seen him looking at maps of Israel. For a year he had read continually books on Zionism and Jewish life, and studied intensely in his spare time, but the exact place of his yearning in modern terms had seemed too remote for her to divine the answer or him to make the connection. It was amazing how distant the obvious could be. But now she knew. If she hadn’t sensed his ultimate destination right from the beginning she would not have lived with him and had their child. She would not have set out with him on such a long and perhaps endless journey. As for her independence, didn’t she know that a passion for it carried to excess was a sure recipe for getting nowhere?
She would initiate the change, move him. She felt herself drawn towards Israel, because he saw it as a land whose light was as yet too far away. The preacher’s sermons told of how the Jews were at last able to go back to the Promised Land, and she felt that circumstances had carried her inexorably this far towards it. Events always moved you to what was most profoundly wanted. She recalled the preacher’s face, and his voice, and heard again what he had said, blushing at how she had gone week after week, unbeknown to George, to sit gawping like a young girl before a pop star.
He pressed her hand. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
But he did, and she knew that he did. He always had known. She had surprised him again. She surprised herself. She loved him because it was possible, and always would be possible, to surprise him. People went to Israel for holidays much as they did to Majorca or Italy, she said. The place isn’t so remote any more, nor so strange, she supposed, unless you were like me who happens to be madly in love with someone who has a birthright connection with it.
It’s part of my life to go there, she thought, to a country like any other, yet a place that nowhere else can resemble. Being Jewish was more significant to a person than being anything else. She hoped so. She knew so. She had seen the effect on him when he first found out about his mother. He still hadn’t got over the shock. She would help him, and there was only one way. He was more than half-way there. She had seen him put money into the collection boxes on the counter of the delicatessen. She knew where they belonged.
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