The Innocents

by Francesca Segal

  But when she kissed him, the taste made him shiver. The piña coladas on her breath and the traces of sun cream still on her skin filled his nostrils with the sweet scent of coconut, and took him suddenly and painfully elsewhere. And as he knelt over her in the darkness, it wasn’t Rachel’s gasps he heard.

  Israeli hotel breakfasts have their origins on the kibbutz, where breakfast comes at the middle of the working day—if you’ve risen with the sun to pick fruit or tend chickens, by 8:00 A.M. it’s time for a substantial meal. At center stage are the least exciting elements—rectangular catering trays steam-heated and steaming with scrambled eggs, oily roasted tomatoes, pancakes (both potato and blueberry), the customary glass bowls of slippery pink grapefruit segments and slickly purple-brown prunes sodden with syrup ubiquitous in hotel dining rooms. Beside the yoghurts, cheeses and smoked fish are cut vegetables, tart young purple olives, small, dry Middle Eastern cucumbers, fresh chopped tomatoes, sugar-sweet and drowned in salted lemon juice. And beyond these the firm cheesecakes, iced lemon cakes, poppy seed coffee cakes, brownies, Hungarian sponge cakes with walnut icing and bowls of whipped sour cream. In no other country had Adam ever seen chocolate mousse served for breakfast (piped into champagne glasses, a black chocolate musical note perched proudly on each swirled peak). Glistening neon-red carrot jam; bowls of shredded halva, chocolate-covered almonds, candied orange peel, glossy, flaking baklava. It is all there in an emulation of the exhausted farmworkers’ reward, laid on for holidaymakers who will exert themselves only in the harvesting of souvenirs, and the picking of lunch from the pool menu.

  The Gilberts breakfasted at one end of a table for twenty. As Jaffa’s cousins had set off late the night before, in typically intrepid fashion, to drive the six hours back to Tel Aviv, their numbers were depleted to a more modest sixteen. Brunch on New Year’s Day was extended until eleven, and so they had all assembled at 10:00 A.M., a jaunty and cheerful crew. Not for this family the traditional morning cocktail of Alka-Seltzer and regret; Rachel’s was the only hangover at the table—quite possibly the only hangover in the dining room. She sat white-faced behind her sunglasses and nursed the orange juice that Adam brought her.

  “I feel wobbly,” she whispered sadly.

  “That’s okay, Pumpkin, you’ll feel better soon.” Next to the orange juice he set down a café barad, a slush of coffee, sugar, cream and crushed ice that swirled beneath the revolving blades of a self-service granita machine. She sipped some feebly from a teaspoon.

  At the head of the table, Lawrence began tapping his coffee cup with a fork to command attention, but to no avail. It would take a far greater sound than that to be heard over the symphony of shouting and laughter, the clink of spoon in bowl and fork on platter. The sound track of three hundred breakfasting Jews, hungry and unleashed in a room of unlimited carbohydrates. “Hey!” said Lawrence eventually, tapping louder. His family looked up.

  “I would like to propose a toast,” he continued, lifting up his coffee. “I for one was tremendously touched that Adam took the trouble to come all the way to Israel and surprise Rach when we all know what a tyrant his boss can be”—here everyone laughed except Jaffa, who after thirty years of marriage no longer pretended to be amused by her husband’s most overused jokes—“and as it’s the first day of the new year, the year in which you’re getting married … the year in which my little girl is getting married … sorry.” He paused and swallowed several times. “Sorry. Yes, as I was saying, this is the year that the rest of your lives are beginning and I just wanted to say, well. It seems crazy to welcome you to the family, Adam, when you’ve been part of our family for such a very long time, and such a very welcome part of it. So instead I will say we love you, and thank you, for joining our family, and for making our Rachel so very happy. I wish the two of you many happy years together and Adam, I wish the two of us many happy years together at the Arsenal. L’chaim.”

  Cappuccinos were raised; Adam clinked his orange juice with Jaffa’s iced tea; Rachel clinked coffee slush with her younger cousins who were drinking the same concoction through slim red straws. Jaffa, despite her eye rolling during the opening words of Lawrence’s address, was now sniffing loudly and reached with one plump hand for her husband and with the other for Rachel.

  “Ach, my family,” she said and then released them and strained over Rachel for Adam, cupped his face between jeweled fingers and squeezed. Rachel, trapped in the middle, objected.

  “I can’t breathe, Ima, get off, leave Adam alone.”

  Jaffa sat back with the benign expression of a woman who was, despite her family’s recurrent exasperation with her, completely secure in their love. “Okay, okay. I leave him. But my new son will go and get me another boureka, yes? Potato, not cheese.”

  14

  How does anyone know when it’s right to marry? Around the pool were sun loungers in pairs, on them couples sleeping, chatting, passing drinks and sun cream and books and babies to one another in a constant exchange of thoughts and things. In the pool a broad, tattooed father with a stubbled face and wet-shaved head was throwing a gleeful toddler high in the air while his young wife swam lengths, her lean body dark and muscled and barely concealed in a white bikini. Two long black braids trailed behind her in the water. In the shallow end was a modern Orthodox couple (identifiable as such because, although they were Orthodox, they were liberal enough to swim together), he in a Hawaiian print shirt and baseball cap in addition to his baggy swimming trunks; she in a long-sleeved T-shirt that ballooned around her in the water, her hair modestly stowed beneath a rubber swimming cap. They also had a baby with them but this one was smaller, smacking the water with tiny fists as mother and father held her together and smiled encouragement. And sitting on the side of the pool was another young couple, he with carrot-shaped blond dreadlocks and she with the lower half of her hair shaved and the rest cut short as if they might have only a certain amount of hair between them, though both had an equal number of piercings. They sat on the damp concrete with their legs in the water and their arms around each other. And looking among these couples, on every left hand there glinted a gold wedding ring. Adam fought the urge to go to each man he saw branded thus and shake him and demand to be told, How did you know? Are you happy? What might you have had instead?

  “I’m feeling sooo much better.” Rachel flopped down next to him, restored to life by a long nap and a swim. She pulled at the silver chopstick in her hair and arched backward to let her hair fall over the back of the chair—it was crucial to keep dry hair away from wet shoulders. In this position she remained for several moments until satisfied that the midday sun had evaporated all potentially frizz-inducing droplets from her skin. Lawrence appeared before them, careful to adjust his positioning so as not to interrupt his daughter’s access to the sunshine.

  “Pedalos?” he asked. “I think the Wilsons are going down; they’ve reserved four of them so you two could take one.”

  Rodney and Charlotte Wilson were old friends of the Gilberts’. Rodney had been at school with Lawrence and was now his squash partner; their elder daughter, Lucy Wilson, was Rachel’s age and had also been in her class at school. Leonora Wilson was much younger and had been at school with none of the Gilberts but had been in the same Sunday school class as Tanya Pearl’s sister Hayley. Charlotte Wilson’s cousin, who had become religious and upset the family, had studied in Jerusalem ten years ago with Jaffa’s cousin, who had also become religious and upset her own family. Rodney Wilson was an orthopedic surgeon and had once helped Adam’s mother with her back. Numerous other tangential connections united them.

  “Great,” Adam answered before Rachel could opt to remain supine. “It’ll be perfect for your tan, Pumpkin, we’ll stay in one spot and just go round in circles so you can get all angles covered.”

  Rachel pulled a face at him without opening her eyes. Lawrence laughed and continued along the row to issue invitations to other friends.

  The last time that Adam had captained a
paddle boat he had been in Hyde Park, desultory swans drifting past as he and Rachel explored the motionless expanse of the boating lake beneath a lead gray sky. The long-ago date had been a success, however. Boats were romantic even if the weather did not hold and the swans, close up, were raggedly dirty and bad-tempered and just slightly menacing. It was all rather different on the Red Sea. They pedaled away from the pontoon, powering slowly through clear turquoise water toward the red hills of Jordan. On the shore behind them tall palm trees threw perfect fluted shadows on the sand.

  “I’ve found a dress, I think.”

  “Cool. What’s it like?”

  “Well, obviously you’re the last person I can say what it’s like to when you’re not meant to know anything. But it’s gorgeous. Yael and I were looking at Vera Wang online yesterday and there’s one that I really think is it. And Tanya knows someone who used this brilliant seamstress in Belsize Park who can copy anything, so I’m going to try it on in Selfridges, and if it works then she can make something similar. And it’s perfect because that way I can change it a bit too.”

  “How long does it take to make a dress?”

  “She thinks about six weeks, depending on how busy she is. But six weeks probably, until the first fitting.”

  “So in theory it could be ready by the middle of February.”

  “Yes, if I find the right fabric for her, too. She’s given me the names of a few places to go.”

  “Hmm. How are you ever going to choose a color?”

  “Yes, ha-ha, Ads, I know, all wedding dresses look the same to you but I actually do have to choose a shade.”

  “What about red for Arsenal?”

  Rachel ignored this, as she did so many of his jokes. Her selective hearing became particularly selective when she deemed his frivolity to be in poor taste as it saved her the bother of getting annoyed. “At first I thought maybe oyster.”

  “Not kosher.”

  “Or ivory maybe, or something in the middle, like cream. But I think I’m going to go for white-white. I do tan quite dark.” This with some pride. “And once I’ve chosen that she can start.”

  “So then please, Pumpkin, will you consider changing the date of the wedding? I really don’t want it to be in August, that’s still almost a year away—”

  “Eight months.”

  “Eight months, but still, it’s ridiculous. I know how important it is to you to get married in the perfect wedding dress and you deserve it, absolutely. But you’ve found the dress, which you’ve always said is the hardest part, so now I really don’t see why it can’t be late February.” As he spoke he felt lighter—after all, there was no need to have worried; when put like this it was all so simple.

  “Just think about it. All our family and the friends who really matter to us will make sure they’re free whenever, and I want it to be meaningful”—he spoke this with emphasis, a shield held up preemptively against accusations of callousness—“and I don’t want to wait. And now we really don’t have to. And all the rest of it, I’m happy for you to have anything you want, really, any way you want, but can we just at least talk about making it at the end of next month? Last weekend in February, say. Eight weeks is more than enough time to plan …” He trailed off, realizing that Rachel had been sitting still and his own pedaling, rhythmic and synchronized with his emphatic speech, was powering them in circles. They slowed and began to drift.

  Rachel gazed ahead of her for a moment, then pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. “Ads, what’s going on?”

  “What do you mean? Nothing’s going on. I just want us to take back a little control of this wedding, that’s all. It’s about what we want, not anyone else. I think people forget that sometimes and—”

  She interrupted him. “And I really, really don’t understand this big rush all of a sudden. I mean, it was sweet before when you were all impatient and saying that you wanted me to be your wife and everything, but I’ve been thinking about it and Ads, we’ve been together thirteen years now. Why is it such an emergency all of a sudden? Are you actually sure you want to marry me?”

  Adam stiffened. “Don’t be silly, Pumpkin, of course I want to marry you.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m being silly, I’m not. I’m not an idiot. You’ve been acting differently ever since we got engaged, and it feels like maybe you’re having doubts.”

  “I’m not having doubts!” he said, quickly.

  “Well, something’s going on. And if your heart is somewhere else”—at this point Adam’s heart felt as if it were somewhere else entirely, contracted with fear and lodged in the region of his throat—“then it’s not right not to tell me. If you’re still thinking about Kate then…”

  “Kate?” He could not keep the surprise from his voice. Kate Henderson! He had barely thought of her at all in the last years, and when he did it was mostly because Rachel herself had a habit of bringing her up in the middle of arguments. In Adam’s mind, Kate was filed away somewhere in the catalog of sexual memories through which he occasionally rifled, cross-referenced with mild domination and dirty talk and appearing only during moments when his imagination required such supplements. But she did not feature elsewhere. He’d been fond of her; he had even loved her once, maybe. But he had never pined for her, even back then. Kate!

  “Yes. I’m not stupid, I saw how you were with her, I met her, remember? And you said it was nothing but I’ve always known it wasn’t. You loved her. And you broke up with her because she wasn’t Jewish and I know that your dad had always wanted you to marry a Jewish girl and you felt guilty, and that must have been very hard because you can’t feel okay about rebelling against someone who isn’t there. And I know you think, Oh, Rachel’s so conventional and she doesn’t understand anything or whatever, but I understand love because I know the way I love you, and if you want to be with someone then I know that religion shouldn’t get in the way. And nor should what your family would say, or anything you feel toward me that is a”—she was almost in tears now but he watched her steel herself to continue and her bravery moved him more than anything in her words—“a responsibility. I don’t want you to marry me because you feel like you have to. We have a choice here, you’re not stuck. And I don’t know if you’ve been in touch with her or…”

  Adam finally found his voice. This conversation was preposterous and it was preposterous to have it in a pedalo, separated in their molded plastic bucket chairs and unable even to face one another properly. He could not let it continue.

  “Stop, Rachel! I mean—stop. I don’t even think about Kate from one year to the next! This is crazy. And you’re”—he paused and then continued—“it’s so wide off the mark, it’s madness. I want to marry you. No one else. Why would I be begging you to move the wedding forward if I was thinking of anyone but you? Let’s take this stupid boat thing back now. Don’t you see that doesn’t make any sense?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think it makes no sense, it makes sense to me. Yes, let’s go back.” They began to pedal slowly in unison. “Sometimes if someone’s worried about something they want to just do it and get it over with so they don’t have to keep questioning their decision. If you’re really sure that you want to be with me forever then why does it matter when we get married?”

  This was a more apposite observation than even she realized, he thought. He was grasping for certainty. The sooner they married the sooner his vacillating and torment would end, and on that point both his reason and his instinct had been in harmony. She had cornered him. Although he often felt that he was the one to back down in arguments, during which Rachel would contradict herself frequently and wallow in the irrational, he was not used to conceding logical points to her. To concede was usually to indulge. But there was nothing he could say in answer to her question except “You’re right, of course it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if it’s ten years, Pumpkin. I don’t care if it’s another thirteen. I could not be more certain—I want to be with you forever.”

 
; “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you sure you’re sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” To his own surprise he heard his voice breaking and felt the odd sensation that, for reasons he could not articulate, he might cry.

  “Ads!” Rachel reached across the molded fiberglass gulf between them and stroked his cheek. They were approaching the little bobbing pontoon from which they had set out; the pedalo man was semaphoring that they should come in on the left side and behind him stood Lawrence and Jaffa, waving at them and squinting into the sunshine. As they drew nearer Adam could see Lawrence reach for the camera around his neck and aim it at their little craft.

  “Ads, don’t be upset, I love you, I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to be with Kate.”

  “I want to marry you,” he said, with feeling.