The Fruit of the Tree Read online

  I could tell from Michael’s monosyllabic responses that something bad had happened. Childishly, I pretended to continue watching the television, so that I could delay the moment of knowing the truth. But I knew that only the most serious of circumstances would cause Roger to speak directly to Michael without my being called to the telephone to chat with Ruth.

  Michael came off the telephone and I asked, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Carry on watching the film—I’ll tell you later,’ he replied.

  His obvious attempts to spare my feelings and his delay in telling me the news only reinforced my intuitive knowledge that Rita, whom in our school days I had often called my ‘adopted little sister’, was dead.

  Encased as she was in plaster after surgery, Rita had been unable to move. In spite of her youthful resilience, a blood clot had killed her. All the efforts of the doctors to resuscitate her had failed. And even her own tremendous spirit, which throughout her childhood had brought her through operation after operation on her polio-crippled leg, had failed her this time.

  It was around a year since I had last seen her, when she had unexpectedly visited us at the bungalow with a new boyfriend. My job, my marriage and her stay at University had caused us to lose contact, so that information about each other was passed through Ruth.

  Now, nothing seemed to have changed, and despite the knowledge that a tragedy had befallen a girl in her mid-twenties who had always had my affection and interest, I was hurt by the realisation that I could not feel the pain that was justified by the loss of a loved friend. The fact of her death was only a set of words. I could feel no difference between the death and her simple absence from my life, and because of the unreality of the situation for me, I knew I could not conceive of the pain that Ruth and her mother were experiencing.

  But I had built up a store of memories over the years, and these would remain; starting with the little girl who dragged an iron-clad leg and heavy boot as she walked by the side of her tall sister to primary school; through our teenage years, when, as little sisters do, she taunted and teased us, as we chatted and made cursory attempts at our homework; one well-remembered occasion in 1959, when we were all teenagers, when we got off the Tube after a concert, to find ourselves stranded in one of the last of the London smogs, and had to walk the couple of miles home, dodging cars abandoned on the pavement. We insisted that she kept up with us, for with the arrogance of the young and fit (or perhaps because instinctively we knew it was the right thing to do), we never gave her special treatment but expected the maximum effort from her. And she responded by giving it.

  Sometimes, in her earlier years, she was over-shadowed by her clever sister, but eventually her own warm and impulsive and frequently exasperating personality had to burst through. When she had visited us, the previous year, I had seen her as a young woman at last, but now one memory came back to me—that of a rather naughty little girl running from a family meal in a tantrum.

  ‘We may have spoiled her,’ her father had said apologetically. ‘But whatever she does, she has paid for in advance!’

  And now the final payment had been made with her life.

  The funeral was to be the next day. They had hesitated to tell me about the death until the last moment, afraid that the news might endanger my pregnancy. We left Robert, as we had planned, with Sonia. There was no doubt in my mind that we should go. If I could be of any support to Ruth then my presence was doubly necessary. But when we arrived, I saw that it was she, calm and strong, who was being the support to her mother.

  I had never been to a funeral before; it is customary for women to remain at home in Jewish burials, and most of the deaths I had been concerned with had been aunts or uncles, where there had been no reason for me to disagree with the decision of the senior women of the family.

  But this time, the chief mourners, Ruth and her mother, were at the graveside, declining to follow that tradition, and the other relations and friends, male and female, accompanied them.

  We congregated in an anteroom for the first part of the service, read out in a mixture of Hebrew and English. I looked at the haunted, empty eyes of Ruth and her mother, and remembered that same look ten or more years before, when they and Rita had mourned the death of their father.

  Then we went out into the bleak March day.

  The coffin was laid in the ground, the Minister threw the first spade full of earth into the grave and the male relatives and friends prepared to follow suit as is customary, when the mother stepped forward and grasped the spade.

  ‘May I…?’ she asked and the Minister nodded ascent.

  She threw earth on to the coffin, saying, ‘Thank you,’ as if he had given her something special.

  We went back to a relative’s house and accepted drinks with relief after the chill of the cemetery.

  Rita’s many young friends, her boyfriend amongst them, milled about amongst her few relations, already depleted by Nazi Germany. Some spoke of a small act of theirs that had given her pleasure in the last weeks. Others, no doubt, thought with guilt at the deed they had failed to do, the opportunity forever missed, as I did about the letter I had intended to send to Rita.

  I sat with her mother for a few moments as she murmured brokenly of the last painful sight of her daughter in death. I was silent. I knew no words with which to comfort her.

  12. A Tree in Flower

  In the spring of that year, as daffodils burst into life and my child gently reminded me of its existence with those first tiny movements like a butterfly trembling, my happiness could not be held back.

  I felt blessed; so strongly did I feel that I had been singled out to receive this special gift of a child that I used to tell myself jokingly I had a ‘Hotline to God.’

  I was busy and happy. I ordered a variety of shrubs to flower throughout the summer, in particular several rhododendrons of magnificent scarlets and purples to give the same pleasure to passers by that I had experienced on my walks to the village.

  I went hunting for wallpaper too, for after two years, the emulsion was looking grubby. But before redecoration had commenced, Michael arrived home with a bombshell.

  ‘House prices have been shooting up recently. The value of this house has probably doubled…

  ‘Now that I’m employed by a London firm, we don’t have to live here any more…

  ‘You’ve often said you wanted to live nearer to a Jewish community…

  ‘I’ve spoken to some estate agents. They’re coming to look tomorrow.’

  I couldn’t help it—I just burst into tears.

  Michael was amazed at my reaction. He was genuinely trying to do something which he thought would give me pleasure, though it was typical of him to act first and discuss afterwards. Nevertheless, we had talked in general terms about moving back to London many times in the days when it had not been a practical step to take. I suppose Michael had assumed my feelings had remained unchanged and that I was still an alien in the countryside. In fact, it was almost as much of a surprise to me as it was to him to discover this transformation of my feelings. I just didn’t want to go. I had lived through the worst; the isolation, the cold, the darkness. Now I wanted the chance to see it at its best; it was my right! I wanted to see all the plans we had made come to fruition. The bungalow had been conceived and created by Michael and me, and, like a parent, I wanted to watch its development. I wanted to pick the apples and pears and plums from the trees in my garden and see the rhododendrons flower, this year and every year. Without realising it, I had taken root here, and, like one of our own mighty oaks, I could not be transplanted.

  But Michael had set the wheels in motion now and, despite my initial strong feelings, I agreed to allow things to take their course.

  There’s always a glimmer of excitement about something different happening. I took to looking out of the windows expecting to see hordes of cars queuing to view the bungalow. Sometimes, I saw vehicles cruising round the circular drive, their occupants peering from windows
, and I was affronted that they chose not to look inside. When prospective buyers did call, I was surprised that they did not overwhelm me with compliments, and they too were probably slightly taken aback when I told them aggressively, ‘I really don’t want to move at all, you know.’

  We told Doug and Beryl, and they urged us to change our minds.

  ‘When I come down that lane, I feel as if I’ve left the rest of the world behind,’ Doug said. ‘You’ll never find anything else like this, you know.’

  Nevertheless, we made a pilgrimage to the South London/Surrey border, which seemed an appropriate area to consider, and looked. And there was nothing, just nothing that resembled our wood and its gleaming silver birches and jungle size ferns.

  ‘Look Michael,’ I complained, ‘all those houses have got neighbours.’

  In the period of—almost—solitary confinement, I hadn’t realised how hermit-like I’d become. Now I recognised it. I loved the company of other people; I loved to have friends to visit and vice versa, but I didn’t need them all the time. I was happy with my own company, and the seclusion of the bungalow well suited me.

  As for the problem of being in a minority group, one meeting with another Jewish mother, living four or five miles away, had considerably removed many of my doubts, simply by her presence and the ability to discuss with her my apparent problems.

  There didn’t seem to be any reasons left why we should move, but still the house stayed on the market, and I became used to people occasionally drifting in and out, and ceased to take them seriously.

  In the meantime, the pregnancy was progressing and I had to decide where to have the baby. A lot of mothers at that time had second and third confinements at home, and while, at the present time, women are often deprived of this privilege and even fight for it, it was not one that I sought then.

  On the contrary, the thought of having Michael as both cook and nurse was quite sufficient to persuade me to seek hospitalisation for the maximum time they would have me.

  When friends asked me, ‘Why do you want to stay in hospital so long? I couldn’t wait to get out,’ I had to explain to them about Michael’s lack of domesticity.

  Being the sort of person who liked to make progress fast, he was very impatient. Given a house to build, or any similar project to organise, he was in his element, but faced with the endless trivial minutiae of running a home, he was soon irritated. In his single days, he had burned out numerous kettles, because he always wandered off to do something more interesting, before they had boiled. If left with a cooked meal to reheat in a saucepan, he would turn the gas up full, thus burning the bottom, long before the top was even warm. Even though he had lived alone for some years before I came on the scene, he never cooked for himself, preferring to go to a café, go to his mother (though that meant a thirty-mile drive) or go without.

  It was practical and totally selfish of me to choose to stay in the maternity home, where I would be provided with food, rest and clean nappies for the baby into the bargain. But with five close female relatives, Michael and Robert could do a tour of all of them and they were sure to be well fed. Consequently, I returned to the maternity home where Robert was born and, to my pleasant surprise, they accepted my booking for a ten-day stay.

  Michael received the news of the fait accompli with a degree of puzzlement. It was becoming obvious to him that I was not seriously considering moving anywhere else during the next few months.

  ‘Let’s take the house off the market,’ I said. ‘We don’t really want to sell it.’

  I didn’t feel that I was persuading Michael to do something he would come to regret, for I knew that, though he was less sentimental about our home than I was, he had always loved its rural position. Especially beautiful was the path to the bungalow with its archway of trees created by the interwoven foliage overhead, which seemed to lead towards a special secret place—a clearing in the midst of the wood.

  It was decided. And now I could spend the rest of the spring and summer contentedly growing fat and waiting for my baby.

  The very important and much discussed 1971 Census took place and a pleasant young woman arrived to collect our form.

  ‘Should I put three and a half people?’ I asked her laughingly. I wanted the whole world to know our good news.

  There were so many things to do, now that we were really sure that everything was going to be all right.

  We had found the pram in a dreadful condition after nearly three years hemmed in at the back of the garage. I was sad to see it in this state, for it should never have happened. If things had gone right in the previous pregnancies, it would have been in use, instead of forgotten, behind Michael’s plumbing equipment. I cleaned it up as best I could for its new occupant.

  Then all the old nappies emerged and I remembered how lazy I had been about washing them when they were brand new, and how my mother-in-law had done them all while I was still in hospital after Robert’s arrival. What a pleasure it was now, to see them, frayed edges and all, hanging out in the sun with all the little stretch suits and white cardigans, ready and waiting for this long awaited baby.

  A couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had visited me from time to time and argued and discussed beliefs with me, in the days when I desperately needed to talk to somebody, arrived one morning.

  ‘I haven’t time to talk to you. I’m too busy,’ I told them.

  ‘You realise the end of the world is at hand,’ said one.

  ‘In that case, I have even less time,’ I said firmly, adding more gently, ‘I’m expecting a baby,’ as if that explained everything.

  And they should have known that I felt the Lord’s benevolence was focused upon me like a laser beam, and in the glow of that feeling, I was insulated from all sadness, and could no longer believe in disaster or tragedy. Perhaps all pregnant women feel that way, or perhaps it was because things seemed to be going well for the first time in some years.

  But in spite of my general contentment, there were clashes of will between Robert and me. Robert was an attractive little boy, whom other adults regarded as very well behaved, but at home he was often mischievous. Perhaps he deliberately annoyed me to get my attention, because I was often in a daydream and still very slow at doing housework.

  I had an old-fashioned belief in discipline, though it seemed to make no apparent impression on Robert. Once I chased him the length of the bungalow and finally cornered him in my bedroom where I proceeded to smack his bottom for what I considered a serious misdemeanour. Turning to me, apparently unhurt, he said in a stern voice, ‘Mummy! Behave!’

  On that occasion, I couldn’t help laughing, but often I got very angry with him, because he disobeyed me. Michael would sometimes intervene, when he was around, trying to cool the situation by making such comments as, ‘You two are both behaving like three-year-olds.’ However, such statements would only succeed in making me all the angrier. I was quite envious of Michael’s relationship with Robert, for he was obviously the ‘fun person’, whilst I had been granted the role of ‘family grumbler’, and when he sided with Robert against me, it was bound to make my criticism seem unjust.

  Only on rare occasions did Michael speak sternly to Robert, and one of his favourite expressions was: ‘If Daddy says “No,” Daddy means “No,”’ after which Robert would solemnly echo, ‘Means no, means no.’

  Michael himself used to get no little pleasure out of seeing me lose my temper, so perhaps Robert inherited this trait. Michael’s own emotions were often expressed through sarcasm, and a few well-chosen remarks could send me into a blazing tantrum. Adding fuel to the fire, he would say, ‘You’re only four inches away from me. Why are you shouting at me?’

  Later he would describe the incident to friends, telling them, ‘You should see Jackie, when she loses her temper; she’s like a little hen, flapping her wings!’

  I could always laugh at these storms afterwards, but could never convince him of the frustration of being unable to put my point of view, at
the time.

  Nevertheless, when I was cool, I too would describe Michael’s behaviour to an amused audience and took a certain perverse pride in his eccentricities. Who else, on discovering an area of rust in the floor of our car, would have cut a hole a foot square in front of the passenger seat, with only a sheet of board to keep the passenger on the inside and the elements on the outside? Mine was the privileged position in the front passenger seat, and now, being of a cautious disposition, I would sit squarely in the seat and refrain from fidgeting.

  Summer had come, and it was a succession of sunny days, in which, as I grew heavier and more lethargic, I did the minimum of housework, a little pottering in the garden and, in the main, sat in a deck-chair, idly chatting with friends.

  But even in the most perfect of pregnancies, you become bored with the limited wardrobe, tired of carrying a lump everywhere you go, frustrated at the difficulty of reaching the far side of the kitchen worktop or cutting your own toenails. At just the right psychological moment, I had a morale booster in the shape of an evening out in London.

  We had been invited to a bar mitzvah, the Jewish ceremony where a boy of thirteen is welcomed as an adult into the fold. We were not able to attend the religious ceremony itself, but were collecting my parents from Hove and going on with them to the evening celebration and meal.

  I was able to borrow a silky trouser suit from a selection provided by Jill and Carol, and when my hair was set and face made up, I felt quite like a human being again. Most of my relations simply couldn’t believe I was seven months pregnant, and they couldn’t have said anything nicer than that. One cousin scolded me for smoking, but I pointed out that I didn’t normally smoke many more than five a day.