The Fruit of the Tree Read online

  Unfortunately, in one respect, the Aunties’ visit was something of a disaster, for as soon as we had crossed the South Downs in the car we had hired to transport them, we discovered that the rest of the South was covered in snow, which grew worse as we drove towards Surrey. Only Michael’s quick reactions prevented us from being stuck on any of the hillier roads that had entrapped other motorists who had attempted them, but the journey was long and slow, and the bungalow only a few degrees above freezing when we arrived home. We would not have chosen to inflict such conditions on the Aunties, but they endured them stoically and merely congratulated themselves on remembering their hot water bottles.

  They came from the generation that lived through the Blitz and they had done war work together in the sugar beet factories of Lincolnshire. This small adventure would simply add another tale to their repertoire.

  The next day, the sun melted the snow and shone through the windows. We looked out and admired the chaffinches and bullfinches, swaying to and fro on the long, long grass in the garden. Perhaps we were not quite mad to live here.

  The first snow dispelled any doubts we might have had that winter would finally arrive. But we had been lucky; we had had a wonderful summer, and a bright and beautiful autumn. It could have been so much worse.

  Our next visitors were cousin Colin’s sister and fiancé, and in their honour, we were able to provide lights in the lounge for one hour.

  Colin’s occasional visits and careful work on the generator had eventually borne fruit, for we were finally able to connect it up. However, we had lost touch with the electrician who had carried out the first stage of wiring, a year before, and wires stuck out of the walls, awaiting the fixing of switches and points, which Michael had not yet found the time to do.

  When the generator was finally ready, Michael sent me out for light fittings for the lounge, and the first connections were made. However, we could only afford to have lighting on special occasions, for the generator used a gallon of petrol in an hour, and even if it had provided lights for the whole house, it would still have been too costly to run on a regular basis. In addition, the ancient contraption made a noise like a steam engine and emitted dreadful fumes from its exhaust, which we aimed in the direction of the Colonel’s empty field, next to us.

  Disappointment that the generator could not be the means of solving all our problems was slightly mitigated by the resolution of another difficulty. We were going to have a telephone.

  We had always assumed that our principled Colonel had prevented us from having this facility, since its wires would have to cross his footpath. However, in the course of a general enquiry, which Michael made from the office, he discovered that we had misjudged him; for it was our near neighbour, Mrs. Baker, who had failed to sign the forms agreeing to our telephone wire being linked to hers, at a point near the eaves of her house.

  ‘Oh, if only we’d known.’ I moaned, thinking of the many unnecessary walks to the village, just to use the phone. I felt sure that Mrs Baker’s action, or rather, lack of it, had been one of simple forgetfulness rather than deliberate awkwardness.

  My initial visit confirmed that she was completely cooperative. She would be happy to sign the appropriate form.

  ‘But you’ll have to hurry,’ she told me; ‘I shall be moving at the end of the week.’ It appeared that she had not been happy there since her husband’s death and was returning to South Africa. The house had been sold to a young couple. It was quite a thrilling thought for me that our near neighbours would be contemporaries and perhaps ‘kindred spirits’.

  Without delay, I returned to Mrs. Baker with the required form, and a few days later, I was at the house yet again to make overtures of friendship to the new occupant.

  I had to summon up a lot of courage to do that, for I’m not normally a very outgoing sort of person; I really prefer friendships handed to me on a plate. Nevertheless, I had reached desperation level, and was prepared to go to new lengths.

  The girl who answered the door was dressed in a bright red dressing gown. I had become quite used to getting up early and was quite smug to find someone with my old bad habits. I introduced myself and invited her to join me for coffee during the course of the morning. She was not very responsive, but she agreed.

  As pleased as if I was preparing for a date with a male, I rushed home and tidied up; prepared the fire, put the milk on for coffee. But she didn’t come—not on that or any other morning. It was a blow—to my pride as much as anything else, for it seemed that a young woman of my own age had summed me up in less than five minutes and decided that my company was not worth having.

  Much later, when I discovered that she was a ‘Bunny girl’, living with the young man in residence, I appreciated that she probably had such a totally different lifestyle from my own that it would have been difficult for us to find anything in common. Realising that did much to repair my damaged pride, though not my disappointment at the lack of a companion near at hand.

  However, on the same morning as the coffee non-event, telephone engineers arrived and connected up the wires to our house. A vast telephone pole became the corner post of our land, blending surprisingly well with the trees. Only a few days more and our period of total isolation was ended; once more we were in touch with the world.

  * * *

  There is a limit to how long a man running a business can do so without his own vehicle. Despite our shame at the decaying Wolseley adorning one corner of our ‘garden’ and despite the more or less unchanged financial problems, Michael decided to buy a new car—a new old car, I should say—and one night, a roomy Consul arrived and, on exchange of a hundred pounds or so, became ours.

  That very evening, Michael took us out for a trial run and the car proved satisfactory. On the way back, he pointed out the soakaway, running alongside the holly hedge that formed the boundary between the main lane and an adjacent garden.

  ‘Whatever you do,’ he warned, ‘don’t go down that ditch.’

  Indignantly I replied that I wasn’t quite such a fool as that. The ditch was so obvious; I couldn’t understand why he should bother to mention it.

  Since the car was not to be used exclusively by Michael, but would be left with me occasionally so that I could build up some confidence, Michael rang our insurance brokers the next day.

  ‘You can take the car to the top of the lane,’ he told me later. ‘But don’t go on the main road. You’ll have insurance cover tomorrow, but until then you can only drive on the lane, because it’s private land.’

  Michael could see no reason for me to delay taking a first experimental run in the car, though I would have waited quite happily until the following day.

  Even for me, however, there was not too much difficulty in this short run. Along our slightly bumpy lane; then right turn and down the lane leading to the main road. One or two hundred yards of straight forward driving and that was the full extent of the trip. But now that I was at the main road—what should I do to get back again? I wasn’t very good at reversing straight backwards, so the answer seemed to be a three-point turn. I didn’t like the idea of reversing into the wood—I might hit a small tree or find it too bumpy, so I carefully reversed to the right on to the grassy bank in front of the holly hedge. Too late, I remembered the soakaway. I stopped quickly and tried to pull forward; I thought I had stopped in ample time, but my judgement was poor; when I got out of the car to investigate, I saw to my horror that the car’s back wheels were halfway down the ditch.

  A small, elderly gentleman, white-haired and rosy-faced, appeared on the scene. I vaguely recognised him as a local ‘walker’. It would probably make his day to become a knight in shining armour and rescue a damsel in distress. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him that my husband was within striking distance. In addition, if I could have extricated myself from the situation without telling Michael what had happened, I would have done so happily. I let my would-be rescuer potter about the wood for a few minutes, looking
for bricks to put in front of the tyres, but with the wheels spinning each time I tried to pull forward, I knew our feeble efforts were to no avail and I told the elderly gentleman that I would have to fetch my husband.

  I hardly dared look at Michael’s face when I told him the news, and I stayed at home while he angrily stomped off to examine my handiwork.

  Thank goodness, we had a regular delivery of bread! Just at the right moment, the breadman arrived in his van and towed us out of trouble. In fact, the aftermath of comments from Michael was probably worse than the incident. He just didn’t seem to realise that there’s a world of difference between driving down a ditch and reversing down a ditch.

  8. Let There Be Light

  It was about the middle of December when we received the letter.

  It was from the Colonel; he had written to the Electricity Board saying that he was prepared to accept a lesser sum as compensation from them, as he ‘did not like to think of the Lubens being without electricity for Christmas.’

  Was he genuine? I couldn’t decide. I had often seen him driving around when I was walking with Robert. He never looked at me; I believe he couldn’t look me in the face.

  On the other hand, he may just have realised that the powers of the Electricity Board would catch up with him soon, and he might as well try to compromise.

  ‘Let’s send them a cheque for the balance,’ I said to Michael. There were at least three months of winter still to come and I was suddenly aware that I couldn’t go on much longer.

  We sent a cheque to the Electricity Board right away, but within a few days it was back. They were prepared to agree to the Colonel’s suggestion and since they were settling the matter themselves, they would not require our money.

  The New Year, 1970, was only a fortnight away, and suddenly it had a magic sound to it.

  We had arranged to go to a dinner dance in a hotel on New Year’s Eve with the family, and I was looking forward to it tremendously. We hadn’t been out for such a long time, other than family visits.

  ‘It’s going to be a good year, Michael,’ I kept telling him. ‘We’ve got the telephone; we’re going to get electricity—and a new baby in the summer. I just know it’s going to be a good year.’

  We hadn’t told many people about the baby this time. As in my first two pregnancies, there were no obvious signs yet—no appreciable weight gain, no swelling of the limbs, no nausea. I was lucky; I felt extremely fit. But it was difficult to be extra careful when I felt so normal.

  Michael had recommenced the task of connecting up the electricity, for we had never located our original electrician. Except for the lounge, a whole houseful of wires stuck out of the walls or hung from the ceiling in clusters, and each one must be followed from its source to its eventual outcome.

  It crossed my mind briefly, when I was helping Michael identify the electric wires, that some people said that stretching upwards wasn’t a very good idea. So I tried to be careful and used my kitchen stool, when it was necessary to reach up to the ceiling.

  At intervals, I would hear banging from the loft above.

  ‘Can you hear me? Do you know where I am?’

  ‘You’re in Robert’s bedroom, (kitchen/bathroom, etc.)’

  ‘Can you see the wires hanging from the ceiling? Take hold of one and tie a knot in it.’

  All the wires eventually had knots or S-bends or just came straight down, and that all apparently had some meaning for Michael, and was carefully noted on a complex wiring diagram.

  It was such a painstaking job; it was heartbreaking to think that the electric power would be sitting outside our house, ready and waiting for us before we were ready to receive it.

  A few days before Christmas, a group of navvies arrived and, in Arctic conditions, dug a trench the length of the lane. As snow descended from the bleak heavens, I thought of offering them all some whisky; but I always felt uncomfortable making such grand gestures, and in the end, my nerve failed me. They were probably warmer than I was anyway.

  The Christmas holiday was to be spent partly with Michael’s mother and partly with my parents in Hove. Michael could do very little of the electrical work before we left home. The lounge, of course, was now equipped with light and, in addition, an electric fire and television. Without an aerial, the flickering picture from the T.V. must have resembled the early moving pictures, but after such a long period without that form of escapism in the home, we were satisfied—possibly even as enthusiastic as the viewers of the early movies.

  But for now, the escape was to the warmer climes of our parents’ homes. I had packaged the children’s presents and I had sent Christmas cards to all my non-Jewish friends, including one to the Colonel, which I inscribed ‘With many thanks for your kind gesture.’ This was hardly a kind gesture of my own—rather I had some feeling of rubbing salt into the wound of his shame, if indeed it did exist.

  With a clear conscience and with a feeling of relief, we abandoned our house and our problems to enjoy the family holiday, but at the end of four days, we reluctantly prepared to return.

  I noticed that there was a musical on the television which I wanted to see, and tried to convince myself that that was a genuine inducement to return home early in the evening.

  ‘Let’s hurry,’ I told Michael, ‘so that we can get home in time to watch “Carousel”’.

  So hurry we did; the car zoomed up and down the South and North Downs (on this occasion there was no snow) and swerved round the bends. I didn’t really mind Michael driving fast, but by the time we arrived home, I felt slightly travel sick. There was also an ominous ache at the pit of my stomach.

  I tried to ignore it, as I sat a foot or so away from the electric fire, failing to absorb any warmth from it at all, watching the fluttering screen with no real enthusiasm.

  But the dull ache did not go and eventually, although it was nearing ten o’clock, I was forced to telephone the doctor.

  The answer was predictable. ‘Go to bed; rest. Ring the doctor in the morning if there are still problems.’

  For nearly a week I lay in bed.

  One of the local team of doctors, a pleasant Scottish woman called to see me.

  ‘How many times is this going to happen?’ I asked, unreasonably angry. ‘Must I just lie and wait for a miscarriage to happen?’

  She assured me that if I were to miscarry this time, something would be done to help me next time. One miscarriage could be Nature’s method of removing a malformed child. Two suggested a pattern where the mother might have a weakness.

  My mother, after all, had had five miscarriages before I was born, and it was probably the fear of following in her footsteps that had caused me to want our first child so early in our marriage.

  But in spite of the doctor’s reassurance about the future, I was filled with indignation and disbelief that such a thing could be allowed to happen to me twice, and that those around me were apparently powerless to do anything positive to prevent it, other than to recommend that I should stay in bed and rest. Never before had I considered what a spirit of optimism my mother must have had to have weathered this demoralising experience five times.

  Endeavouring to help on a practical level, the doctor asked if there was somewhere Robert could stay, so that I could rest. Michael and I, who had not previously considered sending Robert away, mulled over the problem and agreed that it would be a good idea. We decided that he would be happiest with my sister-in-law Sonia. Sonia adored children, and her own boy Stephen was old enough at eight to allow her to devote a little extra time to Robert.

  ‘You won’t mind going to Auntie Sonia?’ I asked him, and solemnly he replied that he would not. I tried to explain the situation to him in simple terms. I hoped that this time he would be better prepared for his parting from me.

  Luckily, Sonia was entirely happy to take Robert and, without much delay, Michael transported him to her home in Epsom.

  On the second day, there was an office panic—a pressing call. Michael
had to leave me alone; we rang my mother and asked if she could stay with me. She could stay for one day, she said, and arrived by train, bearing food—as mothers do; a rosy-cheeked, brown-haired capable woman in her late sixties, her looks belying her age. How could she stay any longer, she said, there was Daddy to look after. I realised her role had changed; her priority now was her sick husband, not her child. Not for the first time did I regret the passing of the days when I was tucked into bed and cosseted by my warm-hearted mother. But I was a married woman now; and the apron strings should have been severed a long time ago.

  Having spent most of the day in bed, I came into the lounge and lay with my feet up on the settee, in front of the log fire, covered with blankets. Towards the end of the day, my mother left me to catch her train home, and before Michael returned that night, I watched the traditional celebrations of Hogmanay on the inadequate television. As far as I was concerned, 1970 came in, not with a bang, but with a whimper of self-pity on my lips.

  ‘And I thought it was going to be such a great year!’

  But I had not lost heart entirely, and when Ruth telephoned a day or so later, her words filled me with a ridiculous hope.

  She had hoped to call in; she and Roger were going to be in the area. I would have loved to have seen her, but I told her the present situation—then she told me her news—she was expecting a baby at the end of July. I was convinced then, quite irrationally, that I would not miscarry—that it was fated that our second children would be born at around the same time, just as Robert and Lawrence had been.

  As the week wore on, little changed. I lay in our lilac-coloured bedroom with the radio as my companion, watching squirrels, silhouetted against the matt white sky, playing on the naked branches of the trees.

  Michael was to be seen periodically with screwdriver, switch, plug or wire in his hands, reporting to me, ‘I’ve done the kitchen/hall/bedroom’ and so on.