Her Victory (38 page)

‘At the restaurant in the evening we were a typical English family making a visit to a dear one's grave, as many parties did in those years. We were also, Emma said, enjoying the good food. Father's pepper-grey hair was brushed straight back, and he wore a dark suit, with a high collar and tie, and a watch at his waistcoat. He smiled faintly at Emma and me when we talked about the events of the day in such a way that the people round about thought we were more carefree than we ought to be.

‘Father's illness had improved in the last few years, Emma observed, because what attacks he now had were called grief, and that was something in which he was not alone in those days during and after the Great War.'

Rachel wore a high-necked black velvet dress, and a locket around her neck which held her dead son's photograph. Under it, seen only when she leaned, was a six-pointed golden Star of David. Mostly she sat straight, and it was invisible. Her hair, pulled back and tied, was more ashen than red. To the daughters' amusement and occasional embarrassment Percy would reach across and hold Rachel's hand tenderly for a few moments. She told him not to be silly, though Clara knew that without such gestures she would wither and die. She spoke very little since John's death, and none of us, said Clara, not even father, knew what she was thinking. Her pride was her strength, but her belief in God gave her both pride and strength. Which came first was impossible to say. God was her rock, and she turned into the rock on which the family leaned, though at a cost of denying her basic element which was that of speech. She could not take such weight and yet allow her heart to speak. The tragedy had worn her almost to silence. Speech was painful because her heart could no longer support her gaiety of spirit, and so she became sparing of words, an uncharacteristic state, but one which allowed her to go on living as their mainstay. She thought that because she had broken her father's heart by marrying out of the Faith John had been taken away from her, but Emma said in that case what had the millions of others been punished for?

There was nothing to prove that if she had not fallen in love with Percy and run away from home she would have suffered any the less. Life was tribulation, whoever you were, and whichever way you looked at it, but what she had endured from her husband, and again by losing her son, at last forced her to wonder why she had been so mindlessly in thrall as to have broken connection with her family. She regretted nothing, but speculated on what had driven her to pursue something which, set far beyond Percy's love of her and hers of him, seemed to have vanished in the ashes of life.

The folly of a childish and burning will had, on first seeing her future husband, sent her on a course that was endless. She fell in love with the expression on his face, sensing a vision of the future which, while not clear in its details, drew her even more strongly, a vision of his illness, and perhaps beyond that an intimation of the death of their son. She had been blind to this disaster and suffering that waited in the future, as everyone was, but a hint of it was there, and she knew it, and drove herself even more blindly to the actuality which would never let her go. She had been in the grip of a will so profound and valid as to make her commit the terrible sin of abandoning her family, so that when her parents died she could not go their funeral.

Yet even at this age, after all that had happened in her life, she knew she was the same daughter, except that she lived as if afraid to tread down hard on the soil under her feet for fear she would go on falling for ever.

In order to soothe her pain she lit a candle in a small brass holder every Friday night at the dinner table, which glowed by her side until the meal was over. On striking the match she said a phrase in the clearest Hebrew, and Clara remarked in her diary that while this took place the others remained silent. Rachel said to her daughters: ‘This is for John, for you two, for all of us, and for all Jews. We always lit the candle at home.'

She sat at the table of the hotel-restaurant in Arras with a husband who never ceased to say that he adored her, and she smiled and returned the pressure of his fingers over her wrist knowing that each morning she could wake up and thank God that she at least had the blessing of two beautiful daughters. On such a thought she lifted her glass of wine to drink.

Percy lit a cigar, and ordered coffee, and looked at his ‘Blue Guide to Belgium and the Western Front' to decide where they would go in the morning. The girls smoked cigarettes. ‘It's bad for your health,' Rachel told them every time. ‘You should be careful with your health' – which caused them to recall the constant phrase to men friends: ‘For God's sake, do be careful! If you aren't, it'll be bad for my health!'

But their mother wasn't to know such details about their lives. Not that Clara had been in love with any of the men. Well, not much, at any rate, though it had been the thing to do with one or two who were special, before they went to France or some such place. The only man she'd really loved was John, and still did, and wept silently at night, knowing he would not be in the house when they woke up in the morning. Now that he was dead she loved Emma, who was eerily like her mother and didn't object any more to being told so. Yet it often seemed to Clara that John hadn't been her brother, nor was Emma her sister, otherwise how could she love them so passionately, and at times with such misery in her heart?

3

Tom emptied a whole box which contained items devoted to the motoring tour in northern France: boat tickets, hotel accounts, petrol bills, maps and plans, pamphlets from the Syndicats d'Initiative, photographs and postcards, and bank receipts on money exchanged, as well as the Blue Guide and a diary kept jointly by Clara, and Emma his mother. They travelled towards the Channel along part of the route cycled by John twelve years before, with the intention of staying at Dixmude, but the place was still in ruins so they went on to Ostend, putting up at the Grand Hotel to eat oysters.

In the morning Percy could not get out of bed. Or he would not. He was ill. From what? He said to Rachel that he did not care to leave the Continent, that he could not bear to go back, and wanted to return to Arras and be close to John's grave till he too died.

Rachel said that she also would like to do such a thing, but what was the use? What God gives, He takes away. She held his hand, wiped his tears, kissed him, and steadied a cup so that he could drink tea. She comforted him, but he wept and would not move. He was ill. But there were no symptoms – no headache, palpitations, vomiting, diarrhoea or sweats. Talk of getting a doctor enraged him. Nevertheless, he was ill, because he would not get out of bed.

The girls pleaded. They had to be back in London because there were people to see, dates to keep, shows to go to. When they suggested getting on the boat by themselves, Rachel's face stiffened in an anger they had never seen. They must wait until their father was well, when they would go home together. Emma said she wanted to leave now, and didn't see why they both shouldn't. Or they could all get on the boat, even father, and have the motoring club bring the car back.

Rachel's voice came close to a shout. ‘We've come here as a family, and we will go back the same way, as soon as your father's better.'

Moody and subdued, the sisters wanted something to happen but didn't know what. They walked around the town till, in half an hour, they decided that they had ‘done it' and there was nothing more to see. They sat in a café, passing and repassing the diary to each other. ‘You write about this place,' Clara said. ‘I wrote all that rubbish about the last one.'

‘And a fat lot you wrote, after all,' Emma said. ‘Only two lines.'

‘Two and a half,' Clara said. ‘I say, don't look now, but look at that fat old man over there.'

‘What fat old man?' asked Emma.

‘I said don't look now,' Clara snapped. ‘But look! He's looking at us. I'm sure you could do a whole page on him.'

‘You do it, then,' Emma suggested.

‘It's
you
he's looking at,' Clara pouted.

‘I'm bored,' Emma said.

‘You're lazy.'

Emma scribbled several lines, then rested the pencil across the coffee-cup saucer.

‘Dirty old devil!' Clara said loudly. ‘Just look at him.'

‘Oh do leave him be,' said Emma. ‘He's only reading the paper.'

‘He's not. He's
fiddling
with himself. He really is. Would you believe it? And it's an English newspaper he's reading. He
must
be from Birmingham – or Bradford! It really is too much.' She laughed. ‘I'll call the manager.'

‘Oh don't, please.' Emma knew her to be capable of it. ‘He's not doing anything at all. Stop joking.'

‘Well,' Clara said, ‘I'm bored as well. Damn this life. I want some fun.'

They rented a hut on the beach, and swam in the sea, but the breakers were grey and cold, and sent them shivering back up the sand. At a hotel dance they met two officers on leave from the Rhine, and did not get to their own beds till two in the morning.

Rachel said, with a lift of her eyebrows, that they seemed to be taking very good care of themselves.

‘If we can't,' Clara said, ‘who can?'

Percy stayed in bed for three days. He was ill, and they weren't allowed to doubt it. From the window Rachel could see boats leaving for Dover. Waves erupted against the groynes. She played cards with him, and at such times he was cheerful and competent. But after a game or two he would throw the cards off the bed, and begin weeping again. He was ill, he said. Why did she look at him as if he was not? No one believed him. The world was a black glove, and he was inside it.

Rachel looked away. How could a face change so quickly – and what was the reason? – from being fairly normal to one streaked and shivering with an agony she couldn't bear to look at? She felt like the young girl she had been when his first attack came on soon after they were married. Now he had something to grieve for, and so had she, but her feeling of shock and pity was the same as it had been then. His despair was so intense that her own wracking sorrow had no chance of expressing itself. He was ill, and it was easy to see that his spirit was fixed in such fear and torment that he was beyond help – though she would never admit it.

She calmed him by reading in English from the Hebrew Bible she carried, comforting him by intoning in her beautiful voice verses from Job or the Psalms. He held her hand, and adored her, and became still. He thanked God for sending her, for only through her did the darkness recede, and the black glove relax its grip. When he was finally calm she fought to stop her own tears breaking forth, something which his illness never allowed.

He got out of bed, and they stayed three more days so that he could recover before going home. Rachel sent the girls back as they wished, and she and Percy were alone. They held hands when standing on the beach, and while shopping, and made love in the afternoon and at night. They drove up the coast into Holland for a distant view of Flushing on the opposite shore that was pinned down by sunbeams from the troubled sky.

4

The kitchen was clean enough, Pam thought, but not
really
clean. Wanting a rest from two hours of reading, she went up the ladder with a damp rag soaked in detergent, and rubbed a circle of cleanliness the size of a large coin that might be taken for a dab of fresh plaster whose whiteness had not yet merged. Then she rubbed until the paint under the grease became as large as the memorial plaque sent by the King and his grateful people to John's parents.

An attempt at proper cleanliness would mean enlarging the pristine area to take up the whole room. She looked from the ladder and saw dust everywhere. Closer to the ceiling there were cobwebs and spiders' nests. The floor had been swept but not washed. It was tidy but not clean, calling for days of work.

Everything clean was not quite clean. Lace curtains wanted washing, and the water would darken when they were dipped. Folded tea towels needed a visit to the laundrette, and cutlery could do with a rinse and a polish. Heavier curtains in the living-room should go to the cleaners. The pelmets and woodwork ought to be washed down. Everywhere called for dusting, sweeping and scrubbing.

Was life worth throwing away on such labour every week, month, year? You took one breath only in order to draw another, and laboured from birth till no more breath would come. Everything you did in life was useless, except that it kept death at bay and allowed you to live with as much ease as could be managed. Cleanliness was comfort if you had been brought up that way – though it's no business of mine who cleans the flat, she thought, coming down the ladder and putting buckets and rags away. He'll have to get someone else for the job.

She read again for half an hour, then peeled potatoes and put them into boiling water, laid lamb chops under the grill, and cleaned lettuce. While he carried, searched, sorted, pondered and evaluated the long undisturbed hoard she walked in and out of the dining-room, setting the table and putting down a first course. The immersion in a different life pattern, as well as the long time since breakfast, made her stomach turn with hunger like a swimmer coming up for air. The corkscrew was difficult to pull. ‘I took a bottle of Mersault from the fridge.'

He opened it.

‘You look as if you've just done the nightshift in a soot factory,' she said.

He washed, then sat diagonally from her. With rolled-up sleeves, and a shirt open at the neck, it seemed as if he had lived in the flat all his bachelor days. Even his subdued and worried state emphasized the fact. ‘You must have had an interesting hour or two.'

He paused in his eating. ‘I'll tell you about it.'

‘Take your time.'

‘I still don't know who I am, but I'm getting a rough idea as to who I might have been, and that's a beginning.'