Forget Me Knot (28 page)

Abby was smiling. “Good, because I meant every word of it.”

“So, Mum and Dad want Lamar to come to dinner on Friday night.”

“Fantastic.”

“And I thought you and Scozza could come, too. To be quite honest, I’d be happier if you were there. You know how my mum and dad bicker. You and Martin could help keep the atmosphere light.” She broke off. It was clear another thought had occurred to her. “Hey, why don’t you bring the gorgeous Dan, as well?”

Abby said she was happy to come and was sure Scozza would be, too, but she wasn’t sure she felt right inviting Dan. “I haven’t known him that long. I’m not sure taking him to meet my best friend and her bickering parents is the best idea. Plus, Friday night is going to be a family occasion. He might feel like a fish out of water.”

Soph made the point that Scozza was coming and he wasn’t family. Nor had he met her parents before. “And although my parents and I love you to bits, technically you’re not family, either. Oh, go on, just ask him. I’m desperate to meet him. If it’s a no, I’ll understand.”

Eventually, after much badgering, Abby gave in and agreed to invite him.

DAN RANG
the following evening, just after ten. He was in Devon filming and had only just finished for the day.

“I’m going to be down here all week,” he said, “but how about I drive back to London one evening and we go out again?”

Abby said that although she would love to see him, she wouldn’t hear of him driving two hundred miles for the sake of one evening. Not that she didn’t appreciate the thought. “OK, I’m back Friday,” Dan said. “How about dinner?”

“Ah, speaking of Friday…” She explained about the engagement dinner. “Soph’s dying to meet you, but you really don’t have to come. An evening with my best friend’s eccentric, elderly parents who are meeting their daughter’s fiancé for the first time isn’t going to be the most riveting occasion. And Soph’s mum and dad are always arguing. You’re bound to feel awkward. I’ll totally understand if you say no.”

“Will there be chopped liver?” he said.

Abby giggled. “Definitely.”

“And chicken soup?”

“Yes.”

“With matzo balls?”

“Are you kidding? Soph’s mum is a great cook. Her chicken soup always includes the fluffiest matzo balls.”

“I don’t suppose she does stuffed chicken neck?”

“Actually, she does.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“OK, count me in. I adore Jewish food. I haven’t had homemade chopped liver or stuffed chicken neck since Jonathan Lieberman from school invited me to his house for Friday night dinner.”

“But I’m worried you might find the evening a bit too much. You don’t know Soph. You don’t know her parents. I don’t want you feeling uncomfortable.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Nearly all my Jewish friends from school had parents who bickered. I used to think it was part of the religion. You know, the eleventh commandment: thou shalt constantly shout and scream in front of thy son’s school friends, thereby causing him excruciating embarrassment. Anyway, how could I possibly feel uncomfortable? You’ll be there.”

SINCE DAN
would be battling through the Friday night traffic to get back to London, they had agreed it made little sense for Abby to wait for him to pick her up. They would each make their own way to the Weintraubs’ flat in Croydon.

Abby took Martin with her in the van. He was spectacularly bad company, since he spent the entire journey on the phone to Ichiro. Their first date had been a triumph. Martin must have described it to Abby a dozen times, and by now she knew the order of events by heart. First they’d had drinks at the Met Bar. Then they went to eat at Nobu. Martin had the black cod. Ichiro ordered the ceviche. Afterward they shared a chocolate bento box. They had talked nonstop.

Conversationwise, tonight had been the same. Ichiro had phoned Martin on his mobile just as they were leaving the shop. Their dialogue had focused on two subjects: Martin’s fight to get custody of Debbie Harry and Ichiro’s search for a new job. It seemed that Martin had persuaded Ichiro he couldn’t carry on working for an employer who treated him like something the dog had brought in. An hour later their conversation was just about drawing to a reluctant end. “No, you have to hang up first,” Martin cooed.
“I can’t say good-bye…. No, you… no, you… I can’t. Oh, please don’t make me. OK, how about this—we’ll do it together on my count. One… two… three… You still there? Me, too. Look, you have to be the one to hang up…. No, I can’t…. See you tomorrow, then.” A giggle. “I can’t wait, either…. No, I’ll miss you the most. You can’t possibly miss me as much as I’ll miss you. I’ll be counting every second—”

“I think we’re here,” Abby announced.

Martin pressed end and practically fell into a swoon. “I am in love. I am so totally, utterly and completely in love.”

If Abby had heard this once in the last few days, she had heard it fifty times.

“That’s great, Scozz, and I really am happy for you, but meanwhile, what did you do with the strudel we bought for Soph’s mum and dad?”

“He’s just so perfect. I mean, he’s gorgeous and sexy. He’s into the environment. And he’s really deep. He bought me this amazing book about angels. He’s also into self-improvement. Did I tell you that his aim is to fully integrate his inner and outer life in order to achieve spiritual peace?”

“Yes, I think you may have mentioned it once or twice. Scozz, I don’t mean to be rude, but could you possibly break off from your reverie for just one second to consider my inner peace? I gave you the strudel to look after. I queued up in the Jewish baker’s for half an hour this afternoon. Please tell me you didn’t forget it.”

“Strudel? Oh, yeah, it’s in the back of the van.”

Abby had retrieved the precious strudel and was locking the van when Dan pulled up alongside her. He wound down his window.

“Hey, well done. You made it right on time,” she said.

“For once the traffic wasn’t too bad. I even had time to pick up a strudel.”

Faye Weintraub seemed delighted to receive two three-foot-long apple strudels. “So we’ll have one later on with coffee,” she said as they stood in the hall, with Sam taking coats, “and then there’s one for the freezer.”

“Excuse my wife, she thinks of the freezer as another mouth to feed.”

“Sam, don’t start,” Faye said through a rictus smile. “We have company.”

“Who’s starting? I am merely pointing out—”

“Well, don’t.”

The Weintraubs—she in navy slacks and a belted stripy cardigan, he in fawn slacks and velour carpet slippers— were in their mid-seventies. As Faye would tell anybody prepared to listen, they had spent twenty years trying for a baby. Then, when they were approaching middle age and had long given up thoughts of becoming parents, along came their miracle baby, their beloved Sophie.

As a child, Abby often used to go round to Soph’s for tea after school. There could be no doubt how much Soph’s parents adored their daughter. They called her Sophie Sunshine and always greeted her when she came home from school with the kind of embrace most parents reserved for a child who had just returned from fighting in a war zone.

Sam was always fretting about his daughter going out in the cold. Even when she was eighteen, on the pill and sleeping with Josh Abrahams from school, he would beg her to wear a vest.

In the early days, Abby had been frightened by the way Faye and Sam sparred with each other. It was hardly surprising, since her own parents never argued—at least not in
front of her. Every so often she was aware of Jean and Hugh conducting a strained, wordless dance around each other, but that was about as far as it went, and it never lasted more than a few hours.

It was years before she realized that Faye and Sam didn’t hate each other. According to Soph, they had both come from volatile backgrounds and this was the only way they knew how to communicate—at least with each other. It was different with Soph. They would reprimand her, even ground her from time to time, but Abby never once heard them raise their voices in anger to her. Instead, they sat her down, explained what she had done wrong and why they were punishing her.

Faye and Sam didn’t bicker all the time. At mealtimes their sniping gave way to intelligent discussion. Soph—and Abby, if she happened to be visiting—were expected to take part.

Chez Crompton, mealtimes were spent discussing what was—at least to Abby’s teenage mind—utter trivia: a loose patio tile that needed repairing, a neighbor’s overflowing trash can that was starting to smell, whether the chops they were eating were slightly less fatty than the chops they had eaten last week. Elbows were kept off the table. Abby knew not to speak with her mouth full.

The Weintraubs, on the other hand, debated politics while shoveling food into their mouths. If they kept their elbows off the table it was only because they were busy gesticulating.

Faye and Sam weren’t learned people, but they were thoughtful, intelligent souls who took a liberal worldview that the teenage Abby had come across in few adults. She had certainly never encountered it in people as old as the
Weintraubs. Back in the early nineties, before it became a respectable view, Sam was saying that all drugs should be legalized. “That would get rid of the dealers and stop people stealing to feed their habit.”

They frequently discussed God. The Weintraubs believed in a divine creator; Soph didn’t. At fifteen she had declared herself to be a Jewish atheist Darwinist. (Nearly two decades later, she hadn’t shifted from that position.)

“Faith is simply belief without evidence,” she would argue. “How can you believe in something for which there is no evidence?”

“But that’s the whole point,” Sam would reply, waving a fork or soup spoon. “Faith involves the suspension of reason. Wasn’t it Martin Luther King who said reason is the enemy of faith?”

“I just don’t understand,” Soph would come back, red of face by now, “how you can respect Christians—for example—who believe, in the absence of any evidence, that a man was born to a virgin without a biological father being involved or that this same fatherless man came alive after being dead and buried for three days.”

Argument would be followed by counterargument. Counterarguments would be examined and rejected and new hypotheses proposed.

It went on like this for hour after hour. By the time Abby got home, her head would be spinning. Usually her mum and dad were to be found in the living room. Hugh would be reading the paper. Jean might be knitting or watching a wildlife documentary on BBC2 with the volume turned down, so as not to disturb Hugh. Abby would snuggle up next to her mum on the sofa, close her eyes and listen to the soft, steady tick of the grandfather clock in the hall.

BY NOW
Soph had appeared, looking gorgeous in a burgundy wrap dress. She gave her parents a good-natured ticking-off for leaving everybody standing in the hall for so long. Her eyes immediately alighted on Dan.

“So, you must be Dan,” she gushed, taking his hand and holding on to it for fractionally too long. “Abby’s been telling me all about your film.” She turned to Abby. “God, he really is gorgeous,” she said in an excited stage whisper.

“Soph, how much have you had to drink?”

“Nothing… OK, maybe a couple of thimbles of Mum and Dad’s sweet sherry to calm my nerves.”

Faye led everybody into the living room. Lamar, who had been sitting on the sofa, stood up as everybody came in.

Abby was suddenly aware of music playing softly in the background.
“What we need is a great big melting pot…”

“Oh, my God,” Abby whispered to Soph. “Is that…”

“… and turn out coffee-colored people by the score.”

“‘Melting Pot’?” Soph said. “Yep. It’s Dad’s attempt to put Lamar at ease. Before that he was playing ‘Israelites.’ ”

The two women looked at Lamar, who was fiddling with his gold signet ring and giving the impression of being considerably less than at ease.

Soph started making the necessary introductions while Sam brought round tiny glasses of sweet sherry on a silver gallery tray. Faye directed people to the nibbles on the coffee table and then disappeared into the kitchen to check on dinner.

“Careful as you sit down, everybody,” Sam said. “My wife Windexed the seat covers in your honor, so they might be a bit slippery.” He put the empty tray down on the
sideboard. “Anyway, as I was saying to Lamar before you all arrived, there have been several prominent black Jews— especially in the U.S. I looked them up on Wikipedia.” He produced a scrap of paper and began reading. “There are the obvious ones like Sammy Davis, Jr. and Whoopi Goldberg. Then there’s that American musician Lenny Kravitz and some basketball player I’ve never heard of…. What’s his name? I can’t read my writing…” He was squinting at the paper.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Weintraub,” Lamar said. “It really doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.” Sam was squinting at the piece of paper. “This is going to bother me all evening.” He excused himself and went in search of his reading glasses.

With Sam and his list of prominent black Jews temporarily out of the way, the atmosphere eased and everybody started to relax. Dan got chatting to Lamar about child malnutrition.