by Beth Miller
‘Ah! Ah!’ Zaida, said, getting shakily to his feet. ‘Here he is! Here’s Aliza’s husband!’
He couldn’t remember Nathan’s name. But he sure as hell could remember he was supposed to be my husband.
‘Hello, Nathan,’ I said croakily. My legs were wobbly and I couldn’t look him in the eye. The last time I saw him was flushed clearly all over my face, a great red residue of shame. But it was fine, because he didn’t look at me at all.
‘No need to stand, Moshe,’ Nathan said. ‘You sit now, let me see you. It’s been too long.’
Dov shook his head slightly, and Nathan covered up hastily – ‘I mean, what has it been, a whole week since I saw you?’ – but Zaida didn’t notice. He sat Nathan in the armchair on his left, me on his right, him in the middle like a king with his courtiers. He clasped Nathan’s hand in his.
‘My lovely young people,’ Zaida said. He took my hand too, and before either of us could do anything about it, he joined it with Nathan’s hand. Touching Nathan was as painful and unreal as getting an electric shock. I don’t know what it was like for him, but I presume it was even worse. I didn’t dare look at him, but stared straight ahead, signalling with my eyes to Dov to do something. But he, sitting opposite this horror tableau, was powerless to intervene. It was, of course, utterly forbidden for Nathan and I to touch. How upset Zaida would be if he knew he was facilitating such a terrible breach. It was this thought that gave me the strength to pull away, on the pretext of fetching Nathan a cup of tea.
I took my time, letting the urn go through two cycles of boiling and cooling off, so I could also cool off. When I handed Nathan the cup, he still didn’t look at me, simply took it without a word. Nothing, just nothing could have made me feel more awful, more guilty, more like the scarlet woman I knew he thought I was, than him pretending I wasn’t actually in the room. I sat down again in a state of confusion, almost surprised to find the chair hard beneath me. I felt as not there as a ghost. I wondered if this was what Alex had meant when he described the day we ran away together as an ‘out-of-body experience’.
‘So, Nathan,’ Zaida said, smiling with pleasure as he remembered the name, ‘are you enjoying married life, eh? With this pretty one here?’
It hadn’t occurred to me – though why not? – that this charade would have the potential to be so horribly painful for Nathan. Neither Dov or I had thought it through at all. It was a completely crazy idea. What did I think Zaida would talk about, the weather? I found I couldn’t quite catch the end of my breath.
But Nathan handled the question calmly. ‘I’m enjoying it very much, Moshe,’ he said, though too quietly, so Zaida repeated the whole excruciating question.
‘He can’t hear you,’ I said to Nathan, my shortness of breath making me sound for all the world like an impatient wife.
‘I’m enjoying married life very much,’ Nathan repeated flatly, but louder.
‘Keeps you on your toes, I expect, does she?’ Zaida said, turning to wink at me. I smiled weakly back, dying inside.
‘You could say that,’ Nathan replied.
‘Great-grandchildren soon, I hope?’ Zaida said. ‘Babies?’
My blushing, which had subsided a little after the ‘enjoying married life’ part of the torture, flared up again. Why was he talking about babies? Would there even be babies, in my future? Alex and I had never talked about it. Would Nathan have children? Had I been the one to put a stop to that, for him?
‘You already have great-grandchildren, Zaida!’ Dov cried, clumsily trying to rescue the situation. ‘Uri and Esther’s children, remember? And Joel and Malka have got one on the way!’
‘That’s true. But don’t you agree,’ Zaida turned to Nathan, ‘that Aliza’s babies would be so beautiful?’
Tears started to prickle in my eyes, out of sheer painful embarrassment. Nathan glanced across Zaida at me, acknowledging my presence for the first time. ‘Yes,’ he said. Then he smiled. ‘They would be perfect.’
He still had a very pleasant face.
We walked to the tube station, Nathan on one side, me on the other, Dov in the middle. We talked as we walked, facing front on, not looking at each other.
‘That was really good of you,’ I said.
‘I wanted to see him,’ Nathan said. ‘He’s always been so kind to me.’
‘I know. Thank you, though. For going along with it. With the silly pretence. We’re so grateful.’
My heart was jumping, because I desperately wanted to say something meaningful to Nathan. Something that would explain my awful actions in the past, to try and apologise. But apologising to a man for ruining his life wasn’t something I could say in front of my brother. We were at Hendon station before I knew it, and Nathan and Dov were shaking hands. I was going to miss my chance. I barely had time to say, ‘Bye,’ before Nathan strode off towards the northbound line without a glance in my direction.
Dov and I got on our escalator and I thought fast. As we reached the bottom, I said, ‘Blast, I left my mac at the care home.’ Actually, it was folded up in my bag. ‘I’d better go back.’
‘Oh dear,’ Dov said. ‘I have to get home.’
‘You go. You don’t want Dad to get cross. Crosser than usual, I mean. I’ll be fine.’
I hugged him quickly, then turned and got back on the escalator, waving casually. As soon as Dov disappeared from view I raced up the remaining steps, pushing past stationary people who were standing too far to the middle. I was panting, my legs aching by the time I reached the top, but I kept going, ran on to the escalator for the northbound line, and clattered down it. I rushed breathlessly on to the platform and, thank heavens, Nathan was still there, leaning against the wall down at the far end, his arms folded, staring into space. The indicator board showed that the train was due in one minute.
The last film I watched with Alex was Crocodile Dundee. There’s a scene at the end where Mick Dundee is on a crowded tube platform and he’s trying to reach his girl, but there are so many people in the way, he can’t get to her. So he walks across the top of them, held up by their shoulders and hands. I didn’t need to do a similar stunt now, though, as the station wasn’t busy. As I walked, heart thudding, towards Nathan, I thought of the bit earlier in the film where Mick says, ‘That’s not a knife. This is a knife!’ and both Alex and I laughed and tried to imitate it, Alex agreeing that though my Australian accent was terrible, it wasn’t as bad as his. I don’t know why I was thinking of Alex right now.
When I stood in front of Nathan, he did a double-take. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to speak to you,’ I said.
‘You already did.’ He looked at his shoes.
‘Without Dov there, I mean.’
‘We can’t be alone together. You should go.’
The train came thundering in, too loud to speak across. When it screeched to a halt, Nathan said, ‘This is mine,’ and quickly got on it. I didn’t hesitate, I simply got on too. He looked astonished when he saw that I’d followed him.
‘Don’t,’ he said. He moved along the carriage and stood holding on to one of the poles, though there were spare seats. I stood next to him, holding the same pole, my hand a few centimetres lower than his. He turned his back on me, literally turned away. For a moment I stood still, close enough to breathe in his smell, a soap with a sandalwood scent, which I’d forgotten I even knew. It smelled like the past, of the life I didn’t take.
The train started up abruptly, and we were shaken about. Nathan kept his body rigidly away from mine.
‘Nathan,’ I said. And when he didn’t reply, I said more loudly, ‘NATHAN.’
A large woman in a tight green coat sitting near us looked up with interest.
‘Nathan,’ I said again, half-laughing, because I recognised how far I’d come, and I didn’t mean how far on the wrong train. I leaned closer and said quietly, ‘Please turn round so I can talk to you.’
No movement from him, no acknowledgement that I was there.
I took a breath and raised my voice slightly. ‘I am a fallen woman. A Jezebel. It would be nothing to me to make a massive scene.’ I snapped my fingers. ‘I’d do it like that.’
He slowly turned round, the very epitome of reluctant, and looked at me, eye-to-eye. We were of course, as I’d told Dov, almost exactly the same height. I could see the faint freckles on his forehead, the flecks of auburn in his beard, his hair, long again and curling on his collar, the slight caving to his cheeks where he’d lost weight. I wondered if he could see the black spot in my eye, and what he thought about it.
‘What do you want?’ He could barely bring himself to speak.
I’d imagined this apology scene so often that, now it was here, I didn’t know how to start. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s it?’
‘No…’
His pale grey eyes bored into me. ‘You chased me across a station on to a train so you could say that?’
‘I know it’s inadequate, it’s…’
‘Inadequate?’ He shook his head. ‘Inadequate doesn’t begin to cover it.’
‘Nathan, I’m so…’
‘Don’t tell me again how, how,’ and he ran his hand across his forehead as though his head ached, ‘how fucking sorry you are.’
I winced, involuntarily. It was so utterly shocking, hearing him say that word. I wondered how often he had said it before. Had he ever said it before?
‘You walked out on the day of…’ He stopped, clearly not able to say the words, ‘our wedding.’ He spoke so quietly that only I could hear, and me only just, over the noise of the train. The woman in the green coat was watching us intently, unashamedly, as though we were the on-board entertainment. Nathan started to say something else, inaudibly.
‘I can’t hear you,’ I said, and leaned even closer. He put his mouth almost against my ear, his breath hot and unfamiliar. Our bodies were still separate from each other, yet it felt very intimate.
He whispered, ‘Our families were there. Everyone saw you leave with him.’
The train pulled into Colindale and a large group of under-dressed foreign teenagers got on. The woman in the green coat was blocked from my view as people forced their way into the aisles. Nathan and I were pushed together, and for the first time our bodies touched. He tried to edge away from me and I did the same but it was impossible, we each had people on all sides and there was nowhere to move to. We were closer than we had ever been before, our matching heights making it almost impossible not to look at each other. The noise levels rose higher and higher, the teenagers jabbering at the top of their lungs in Spanish or Portuguese, I didn’t know which.
Nathan closed his eyes. I didn’t think he would speak again, but when the train started moving, he said something. I felt the words as puffs of air against my face. The train and the teenagers formed a buffer around his voice.
‘I can’t hear, I’m so sorry. Could you say that again?’
Nathan still had his eyes shut. ‘Your voice has haunted my dreams.’
He had been trying to hold himself as far away from me as possible, uselessly, as we were so squashed together. Now he seemed to give up. His body felt heavy against mine; I could feel his warmth, the weight of him. I had no trouble at all imagining how it would feel, him lying on top of me.
‘When Dov asked me to visit Moshe, I said no,’ Nathan whispered. ‘I was worried about what would happen. About the possibility of this.’
‘But you changed your mind,’ I said.
He opened his eyes at last, and looked straight at me. He seemed to have resolved something. ‘I need you to get off the train, Aliza.’
‘What, here?’ I looked outside, the blackness of the tunnel dashing past. ‘It’s going a bit fast.’
He smiled. ‘I can’t believe that you can make me laugh, still.’
I smiled back, tentatively, and his disappeared instantly.
‘Seriously, at the next stop, please get off the train.’
‘OK.’
‘You will?’
‘Yes. I don’t want to make things even worse for you.’
The train started to slow down, and perhaps because he knew I would soon be out of his face, Nathan started talking, fast. ‘Your Zaida is a wonderful man. I thought helping you and Dov with him would get rid of some of this.’ He beat his fist against his chest. ‘It doesn’t seem to have worked.’
‘Nathan, I…’
‘Please, Aliza, I can’t bear this,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear seeing you. You…’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You broke me.’
That, at least, was loud and clear. We pulled into Burnt Oak. ‘Can you get off here, please?’ he said desperately.
I nodded, shaking free some tears that hadn’t yet started to fall. I pushed past the teenagers and stumbled on to the platform, searching blindly for a way out as bodies swirled around me. The train pulled away, and I joined a crowd of people walking up some steps, I didn’t know to where. I felt like I had been punched. At the top I stood, my legs shaking, in front of a poster of a tube map till the tears stopped, my blurred vision cleared, and I could work out how to get back to Brixton.
Alex was all smiles when I got home. ‘How was your Zaida?’ he asked. Then he saw my face.
‘Oh no, Eliza, what’s wrong?’
He pulled me into his arms, and I rested my head against his chest, trying to think how to explain myself. Well, Alex, let me tell you about my day. The man I jilted, you remember him? He was there, and we pretended we were married, then he told me I had destroyed his life, so I’m feeling a bit weird. That should do it.
I managed to come up with something not too far from the truth – that I was very upset to see Zaida today, that his memory was getting worse. Alex was lovely; comforting and sympathetic. He ran me a bath, and while I was soaking and crying, he ordered a new item from the food list: Chinese take-away. We had hoisin duck which came with little pancakes, and though I couldn’t eat much, it was delicious. I barely even thought about the duck being unkosher. We watched another film from the culture list, which I picked: Sophie’s Choice.
‘Are you sure?’ Alex said. ‘It’s really sad, you might prefer something light tonight.’
But I welcomed it. I wanted an excuse to cry. I couldn’t help reading rather too much into the film about my own situation, and was absolutely wrung out afterwards. But when Alex wanted to make love, I did. I felt I owed him that much.
The next day was Monday, one of Alex’s work days. After he left, I put on my old clothes. I wanted to see Zaida again, without the tainted feeling of Nathan being there. I hadn’t been able to focus on Zaida yesterday, and that wasn’t fair to him. I texted Dov as I walked to the station, and asked if he was able to meet me there.
Zaida was, as always, absolutely thrilled to see me. In no more than a couple of seconds his face went from blank to lit up. I threw my arms round him and kissed the top of his head, sat down beside him and put my hand over his.
A familiar voice behind me said, ‘So it is true.’
A horribly familiar voice.
I turned slowly round. ‘Hello, Dad,’ I said.
Twenty
September 2000
My heart was still racing when I got out at Brixton. My legs were shaking too much to walk to the flat; instead I went to the Roundhouse and the red-haired waitress, Marlene, brought me a coffee. When I picked it up my hands trembled so much I had to put it down again before I scalded myself. I could still feel the aftershocks of seeing Dad in full flow. I’d somehow forgotten how terrifying he was.
I bent my head to the cup, to avoid having to pick it up, and inelegantly managed to sip some coffee, which helped calm me down. When my hands were steadier I texted Dov, asking if he was OK. He would even now be getting the brunt of Dad’s rage, and I knew, with a leaden feeling in my stomach, what that would be like.
When I told Alex that he knew everything about me, I had of course been talking nonsense. I realised that now. Here a
t last was a list from me to him that would come as a surprise: Things Alex didn’t know about my life before I met him. I wondered if I would ever be able to share it with him.
My father used to hit us children when he was angry, and he was angry most of the time. Though he didn’t often hit Mum, she was far more frightened of him than the rest of us were. She was brave, though, always standing up to him when he went for one of us.
I remember when I was fourteen, two representatives from Jewish Women’s Aid gave a talk at the synagogue about domestic violence. They were laughed out of the building. I remember a girl turning to me in disbelief and saying, ‘How can they think that a Jewish man would ever hit his wife? What a joke.’ Becca and I followed the speakers out to the street and as we casually walked past, Becca put out her hand for one of their leaflets. I hid it down my skirt and later we gave it to Mum, but she set fire to it over the sink for fear that my father would see it. We never spoke of it, not at the time and not afterwards.
I was seven when my father first smacked me; or at least, that’s the first time I remember. I’d been growing increasingly bored in the upstairs section of the synagogue, set aside for the women, far away from the action. So I decided I was going to be a boy. I borrowed some clothes from Joel and stood with my brothers in the men’s section. I would have got away with it too, if it wasn’t for that pesky Uncle Ben. (Alex would be pleased to see me quoting from Scooby Doo, one of the shows on his ‘TV Classics’ list. I enjoyed it, but Alex said it was the same plot every time. We only watched two episodes but it looked like he was right.) Uncle Ben, always a joker, winked when he realised it was me. I thought the wink meant he’d keep it a secret, but after the service finished and everyone was milling about, he said loudly to my father, ‘See you’ve got another boy, Kap. What a blessing.’
