The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  The RUNNING YEARS

  a novel by CLAIRE RAYNER

  © 1981 Claire Rayner

  e-book ISBN: 978-1-84982-034-9

  He looked at her in the dull light of the December afternoon, at the way her shape curved against the line of the window, and said suddenly, ‘It’s going to be marvellous, being us, Hannah. Isn’t it?’

  She stood very still for a moment and then smiled, slowly. She felt comfortable now, languorous and relaxed, though a ghost a pain still lingered. ‘Yes,’ she said, and he smiled too, a wide boyish grin, and for a moment their roles were reversed and she was reassuring him.

  The next few hours were, for Hannah, the most precious she was ever to know with him. They pulled the curved chaise longue over to the fireplace, and Daniel replenished the grate until the flames leapt again, and they sat curled up together, drinking their cold tea and eating their leathery toast. The afternoon drifted into an early evening and the widow turned lilac, then violet and at last indigo before Daniel yawned and sat up.

  ‘Darling Hannah,’ he said. ‘We have things to do. I must go and tell them at home, and find out what’s happening about Aunt Mary’s funeral and the shivah.’

  ‘Poppa,’ she said, and the afternoon’s fragile joy shattered. ‘The boys. I’ve got to go back, Daniel. I must.’

  E-published in 2011 by MP Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent, Douglas, Isle of Man, IM2 4NR, British Isles

  The Running Years © 1981 Claire Rayner (1931-2010)

  Book Design by Maria Smith

  Realization Gloria Knecht

  e-book created by GSH 2011

  A novel in five parts: 70 chapters

  A CIP Catalogue for this title is available from the British Library

  1. Jews – Fiction 2. Domestic Fiction

  This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Original dedication:–

  For Max and Muriel.

  With love and with gratitude for just being there

  Claire Rayner trained as a nurse at the Royal Northern Hospital, London and then studied midwifery and also worked as a sister in paediatrics. She married in 1957 and turned to writing in 1960 when the birth of her first child ended her nursing career. She had three children, Jay, Amanda and Adam.

  She was the author of over 90 books, including a broad range of medical subjects from sex education for children and adults through to home nursing, family health, and baby and childcare. Her very successful fiction novels have been translated all over the world.

  Acknowledged as a leading 'agony aunt', Claire Rayner was a major media personality, appearing on radio and TV shows, and was constantly in demand as a public speaker. She was also active in a number of medical and social welfare organizations.

  The Running Years was her twenty-fifth novel and was originally published in 1981.

  Claire died in October 2010 in her eightieth year.

  Acknowledgements

  The author wishes to thank the following for their help with the research: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; The Israel Museum, Jerusalern; Eli Ben-Gal, Curator, Beth Hatefutsoth (Museum of the Diaspora), Tel Aviv; Tirtsah Levie, Curator, Joods Historisch Museum (Jewish Historical Museum), Amsterdam; The Curator, Anne Frank House, Prinsengracht 263, Amsterdam; The Imperial War Museum, London; The National Maritime Museum, London; Jewish Board of Guardians, London; Jewish Welfare Board, London; Education Department of the Jewish National Fund, Lonton; Information Committee, Board of Deputies of British Jews; William J. Fishman, Historian, Morley College, London; Rabbi Michael Stanfield, Middlesex New Synagogue, Harrow, Middlesex; Dora Elliott, Debè Elliott, Alex Elliott, Rose Lee, Mary Moss, Minnie Guttenberg. the late Ronnie Elliott; Ben and Gertie Rosen, Brian Buckman, Max and Muriel Berk and many others too numerous to mention for their invaluable help with folk history.

  And the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other; and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. And among these nations you shall find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of your foot; but the Lord will give you there a trembling heart, and failing eyes, and a languishing soul; your life shall hang in doubt before you; night and day you shall be in dread, and have no assurance of your life. In the morning you shall say, 'Would it were evening!' and at evening you shall say, 'Would it were moming!' because of the dread which your heart shall fear, and the sights which your eyes shall see.

  Deuteronomy 28 64-67

  Book 1 - Scattering

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Book 2 - Gathering

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Book 3 - Growing

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Book 4 - Changing

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Book 5 - Fighting

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Epilogue

  glossary

  The Running Years

  a saga by

  Claire Rayner

  BOOK ONE

  Scattering

  1

  They knew long before noon that they were widows. The fighting had been too violent, the noise too battering, the stench of dust and destruction as buildings crashed all around them too overwhelming for it to be otherwise. But not until late in the afternoon did they allow themselves to throw their robes over their heads and sit wailing in t
he sun-drenched rubble, luxuriating in their grief.

  Not that the wailing had helped Tamar much. She had always been the soft one, the tender one, the one who wept easily, so for her crying offered little comfort now that she was faced with a grievous loss. Omar dead. She could not really imagine it. But she knew it had to be true. So she sat and wept obediently beside Susannah as the children huddled close, and listened to Susannah’s huge racking sobs and marvelled. Susannah, to weep like that? Big strong Susannah with her sharp sardonic tongue and her narrow black eyes that saw everything and sneered at most of it, to weep like that? She must have loved Jehohanan as much as Tamar loved – had loved, she corrected herself bleakly – her Omar.

  The sun shifted slowly, lengthening the shadows of what was left of the city of Jerusalem, and still they sat, their knees hunched at the fabric of their clothes whitening along the folds as the dust of the dying city settled on them. Still, Susannah did not speak. She was not sobbing now, but sat hidden in her robes, a faceless heap of silent anguish.

  Tamar moved, experimentally, and the baby Micah woke from the shallow sleep into which he had drifted and whimpered softly. She picked him up, holding him on her lap with his soft cheek against hers. Just holding him was enough to make her feel better: but he whimpered again and struggled in her arms, and she thought, ‘He’s hungry.’ And as if he’d heard her say the words, Simeon at her other side said, ‘Imma, I’m hungry. Where is Abba? Can we go home now? I’m hungry.

  Tamar looked at him helplessly, and then at Susannah, and at the little girls beside her who sat silent and wide eyed, staring back.

  ‘Susannah?’ She said softly, then more loudly. ‘Susannah? The children are hungry. What shall we do?’

  Susannah didn’t seem to hear. Then, with a sharp movement, she straightened and pushed back her robe from her head. She looked ordinary again. The grimace of distress which had twisted her cheeks was gone. There was a line of sweat beads on the upper lip, and some smears of dirt on her forehead, but otherwise she looked like Susannah; sensible, capable, strong Susannah.

  ‘They’ll have to stay hungry for a while,’ she said harshly. ‘We must go. Come on.’ She got to her feet and the little girls, moving almost absurdly in unison, stood up too and followed her as she went scrambling away over the pile of rubble.

  Bad as the early part of the day had been, the next two hours were worse. They picked their way from one heap of desolation to another, hearing the cries of people buried beneath the debris and trying not to listen, hiding from the bands of Roman soldiers who were still roaming about singing and shouting their victory. They moved from the Temple shadows, past the first wall, and on southward into the Lower City, through what had once been recognizable streets where their friends and neighbours had lived, dodging through the wandering crowds of bewildered refugees like themselves, as the children became more and more weary, more fractious. And though Tamar comforted them as best she could, talking as softly and lovingly to her nieces as to her own two boys, Susannah said nothing. She just went relentlessly on, leading them away, away from home and Jehohanan and Omar and all that had made life real.

  Tamar was not weeping now. She could not, for the terror was too real, the pain too much. She just went on doggedly, following Susannah, crooning to the children and trying not to think.

  It was almost dark by the time they had reached the southernmost wall, overlooking the Valley of Hinnom. Behind the noise, the shouting and the moaning of the injured and dying, went on. Ahead of them the land lay low and unwelcoming in the deepening darkness. And still Susannah had said nothing.

  They stopped then, as the wall lifted ahead of them. The attacks of Titus’s soldiers had been concentrated to the north and east of the city, and here the great piles of hewn stone fortifications remained unbreached. Or almost. Susannah lifted her chin and looked, and then nodding sharply at Tamar, turned west and began to hurry along in the wall’s shadow, making for the deep embrasure they both knew lay a few thousand cubits ahead.

  It was as they reached the curve of the embrasure that Leah spoke for the first time. Her smaller sister, Mehitabel, had cried and nagged and whined as they made their painful way, cubit by cubit, through the hubbub, but Leah had been as grimly silent as her mother. Now she lifted her small pointed chin and said almost conversationally, ‘They’re burning the Temple.’

  ‘What?’ Susannah too lifted her chin, looking at Leah for a moment, and stared back over her shoulder. ‘The Temple? You’re mad. They couldn’t. It couldn’t happen.’

  But behind them the dark eastern sky was lit with the glow of a sunrise such a none of them had ever seen; a rich red and yellow and orange and flaming crimson glory that even as they stared rose and roared and then sank, as though whatever it was that the fire had consumed had succumbed as quickly as it could to the greed of the flames. The glow dropped almost as fast as it had risen, sinking to dull sulking amber. But they could smell it now, the almost cheerful scent of timber burning, a new smell over and above the reek of destruction that had been in their nostrils all day.

  ‘It’s the ninth of Ab,’ Susannah said. ‘We were married on the ninth of Ab, Jehohanan and I. And now they’ve burned the Temple.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Simeon said plaintively, uninterested in fires, unless they were cooking fires. ‘I want my supper. Where is Abba?’

  ‘Dead.’ Susannah said, brutally.

  Tamar tried to reach out for her arm, tried to stop her, not wanting the child to know, just yet. ‘He’s had enough to suffer, don’t tell him he has no father. He’s only five years old.’

  But Susannah was not to be stopped. ‘Crushed like a lizard under a rock. Crushed under a rock. Cut up and bleeding, and burned and dead. Like my Jehohanan. They’re dead, like the Temple, like everyone but us.’

  ‘Oh,’ Simeon said. And then, plaintive again, ‘I want my supper.’

  They clambered through the wall, kicking aside the loose masonry, for Susannah had been right in her guess; other refugees had come this way ahead of them and had opened a breach. Beyond, in the dark valley, a few fires began to dot the blackness with points of light, and the distant scent of cooking had drifted back to them. Now, not only did Simeon but Micah and Mehitabel began to cry in earnest and Susannah had to stop and lift her small daughter into her arms before she went hurrying on. Tamar settled Simeon on her back, his arms around her neck, as she clutched Micah as close and warm as she could, putting her hand on his round belly and pressing gently, hoping to stay the pangs of his hunger.

  Susannah stopped barely three hundred cubits from the wall. There was a patch of scrub and beneath it a hollowed out sandy patch. She swung Mehitabel to her feet and then moving with the economy, untied the bundle of her skirts. Tamar, as ever following her powerful sister-in-law’s lead, did the same.

  They counted out their meagre store, the few things they had managed to snatch when they fled from the house they had shared in the shadow of the Temple, after Jehohanan and Omar had gone, kissing the children briefly, warning the women to go as fast as they could to the comparative safety of the Lower City, as far as they could get from Titus’s marauders.

  There was a bag of meal. There were a few dried fish, a handful of dried dates and figs, and some olives. There was a small leather bottle of thin olive oil and a couple more with water in them, and some almonds. Pitifully little to sustain two women and four children, but God alone knew where they would get more. Behind them the city with its shops and warehouses, it’s merchants’ stores and the kitchens of ordinary people was being looted of what little food there was by the soldiers. Ahead of them lay the valley and then the open plain, and where we they to find the food there? Had not Jerusalem itself been starving for well over a month, as the siege had bitten harder and harder into the defences?

  ‘We’ll eat what there is, and then worry,’ Susannah said and sent Simeon to collect sticks and build a fire, whilst Mehitabel searched for a flat stone on which they could bake some b
read.

  As the night wore on, the glow of the burning Temple sank ever lower into the horizon and the bitter desert cold crept into their bones. But their spirits lifted a little, for Simeon had found a good store of wood, and their fire burned bright and hopeful and the bread they had mixed from meal and oil and water baked fast on the slab of stone that Mehitabel had found. So the children ate, and at last slept, exhausted with terror and running and the sheer extraordinariness of it all.

  But their mothers did not. They sat and stared back at their dead city, and thought of their dead husbands.

  Grim serious Jehohanan, the Zealot who was more passionate than any of his fellows, the fighter who had devoted his life to his belief in the rightness of the Great Jewish Cause, who had hated the Roman invader with a violence that made his body seem as though it was made of rock, so rigid did he become when he spoke of them.

  And Omar who had fought with him, and been as brave as any, if less committed; for Omar it had been his brother who had mattered. He had been at heart as gentle as Tamar, an easy going, easy laughing man with hair as black and curly as Tamar’s was straight and red, eyes as narrow and dark and laughing as Tamar’s were blue and round and solemn. A lovely man, Tamar thought, and stared at the city where his corpse lay somewhere in the ruins. A lovely man. I wish his brother had not been so…

  But she pushed that thought aside and made herself think lovingly of Jehohanan, the fighter, the plotter, the spy and then the warrior. Even since Omar had first come to her parents’ house in far off Babylonia, all that time ago, six long years ago when she had been fourteen and her own dear Imma and Abba had been looking about for a good husband for her, Jehohanan had hung over their lives like a shadow. Omar had come to their house, a handsome and well spoken-of young merchant, sent by distant Jerusalem relations to make trading contact with the rich Jews of the Exile. A happy lot, were the Jews of Babylon. Once they had wept bitter tears of loneliness, longing for Jerusalem and home, but that had been long ago, well before Tamar’s time. She had grown up comfortable and very satisfied with life in the town of Pumpeditha, where her father traded so happily and successfully. If her great-great-grandfather had wept by the waters of Babylon, she certainly had not.