Her Victory (73 page)

He was rational and cool, and she was afraid as she turned to him, and wondered why he insisted on tormenting her and everybody, till she remembered having pushed him towards the move. ‘What if I said don't go? Forget what I said when I was in a stupid and destructive mood? Somebody told me at the hospital that her husband never took any notice of what she said till the kid she'd had was a year old.'

He was bewildered. There was, she knew, no greater suffering for a man of his sort. He was fearless, and probably cared little about pain, but chaos inside was intolerable. She weighed him up as he looked at her, and such total consideration was the only act of love she could muster at the moment. That she loved him was indisputable, but she wanted him to go, if for nothing more than to prove that he recognized her love, and loved her in return. It was the only test she could make. Having grown to a state when she could confidently test a man whatever the risks, she felt that she had achieved some sort of equality at last.

The children were looking at them, and listening with interest. But it was open-house for that sort of thing.

‘Yesterday,' he said, ‘I collected my plane ticket to Athens, and my boat ticket to Haifa – both one-way. I prefer to go in by sea, to land from a ship. Even the remnant shall return. The sand of the sea shall be washed on the shore. That sort of thing.'

Before she could ask the date of his leaving, Sam called: ‘Can we come with you to Israel, Tom?'

‘Why,' he turned with a laugh, ‘are you going to be Jewish, as well?'

Hilary pushed the heaps of false money aside and stood up. ‘I am. I'm Jewish, Tom. Daddy was Jewish, wasn't he, mummy?'

‘No, he bloody well wasn't.' Judy came in with the tea.

‘And the strangers shall be joined with them,' Tom said. ‘To it shall the Gentiles seek.'

Hilary wept with chagrin. ‘Oh why wasn't he?'

‘He was no bloody good, that's what he was.'

Tom grimaced with disapproval. ‘He was no more no-good than most, I suppose.'

‘You know nothing.' Judy's words were so fierce that all were fixed by them. ‘I loved him. No matter how much of a swine he was, and I knew he was bad, I loved him, even though I knew I ought not to, and felt ashamed and degraded that I couldn't help myself. I went on loving him through more than I dare tell about, and it went on for years, and that's what I can't forgive myself for. And he didn't love me, not a bit, though I was handy as a bit of furniture, and to scrounge money from. I was pregnant when we got married, but had a miscarriage just after the wedding because he got drunk one night and pushed me a bit too hard. That was at the beginning, but he calmed down, for a few years, till I had these two. Then one day he saw me kissing a woman who came to the house. He'd probably already had an affair with her, though I wouldn't have known. But the penny must have dropped, because from then on he was in love with her. It was disgusting the way he crawled and grovelled. Either that, or he would go into such fits of violent hatred, far worse than before, that the danger finally got through to what bits of goodness were buried deep inside him, which even he only caught a glimpse of about once in ten years.'

‘I shan't be like him,' Sam said.

‘Nor me,' Hilary put in.

She looked at them. ‘I knew I had to get rid of him then, or me and the kids would be more deranged than we'd ever be on our own, even with me going on all the time as if I've still got brain-damage from it. But what's the point?' She sat down, as if totally worn out.

‘I'm sorry,' said Tom, ‘but you ought not to talk like that in front of – us.'

He meant the children, and Pam supposed he was right. Someone had to advise her against it, but Pam thought he was hardly the right person, being a man, and certainly more at sea than he'd ever been. Judy, however, looked across at them with an embarrassed smile. ‘I'm sorry too, but I won't mention it again.'

She's upset about us going. Pam sat by her and held her hand, while Tom pulled Hilary to him and stroked her hair. ‘Now stop crying. It's more like the beginning of the world than the end. You can come to see us in Israel after we get settled. I promise. You can bring them,' he said to Judy.

Sam took Rachel when she cried, and rocked her gently. It was a happy family, but all happy families sooner or later disintegrate – cruel, Pam thought, as it may seem. She was tired of it all, and watched Tom set out cups and pour tea.

‘I'm going to Israel,' he said, ‘because it's the only solution. My past will be put into its proper place.' He turned to her. ‘And so will yours be. I want you to come because we were lost in the same ocean together, and came out at the same time. I can't carry you there forcibly, but more than anything I want you and Rachel to follow as soon as possible.'

She wouldn't give an answer, though there was a positive one somewhere in her. The time for thought was over, especially of the kind that degenerated into worry. Having been so long in the beam of chaos, she wanted the futile roundabout to stop. She had changed her life when the odds against doing so had been too heavy to contemplate. She had married blind at twenty, and had come out at forty with her heart so bruised that it seemed as if she couldn't do anything except turn into a cabbage and rot in the earth. There was only space for one victory in her lifetime. Who needed more? Her spiritual and bodily strength hadn't been made for victories, she often thought. It took more strength to achieve them than to sustain defeats. The victory she felt in possession of, though it might seem less than ordinary to anyone else, already felt unique to her.

She did not have to say anything in answer to his question because she felt as safe with him as she hoped he would ultimately feel secure with her. He did not appear threatened or unmanned by her silence. That much had always been obvious. What better love could there be between them? What more did she want? Nothing more. She felt older than the thousands of years he sometimes talked about, but it was part of the victory that her heart blended with his, their beginning already being far in the past. She would go to him when the time was ready, and stay no matter what, because hadn't the preacher's message been that Israel was her country as much as it was his?

Damn the preacher, she thought with the next inner breath. If he had ranted the opposite she would still be where she was, and of the same mind, because it was the only place in which she could find peace. Tom had, after all, brought her from the valley of the shadow of death.

Those who at one time might have said that she had had everything hadn't known that to her it had been as nothing. And now that they could say she had nothing, she felt as if it were everything. Her heart had been unable to live without the almost sensual desire to go into another state of being, proving to her that only by complete change was it possible to learn. The embers of the heart had turned to ash, but they had retained their warmth and were ready to burst into life again. She was rebuilt by endurance, and though she still felt much of the time that she was alone, she also knew that the three of them would find an existence in the place that had been devised for them. With love they would re-create their lives in a new country, and stem the rages that would no doubt continue to torment them. But at the moment she would tell him nothing. He must go without her and Rachel, or not at all.

‘Me come as well?' Judy said. ‘Can you imagine me picking oranges? Still, I might try it for a year: Judy Ellerker, the blight of the Holy Land! I'd love being in the sun, all the same.'

‘You'll adore it,' Pam said, ‘I'm sure you will. I can already see you there.'

‘Do all Jews go to Israel?' Sam's hand hovered around Rachel as if he was playing with a kitten.

Tom put down his cup. ‘Only those who want to. And those who have to.'

‘I wish you weren't going, though.'

‘I'm one of those who have to.'

‘But do you want to?' asked Judy.

‘I don't suppose I'll know the answer to that one until I get there. But there's more to it than just wanting to. It's bigger than that, beyond discussion, like so much else.'

‘Now you're
talking
!' Judy mocked.

He stood apart, conscious of the fact that in a week he would no longer be with them. They knew it. Hilary held his hands tight. ‘Will you play Monopoly with us, Tom?'

‘It's no use,' he laughed. ‘You always win.'

She pulled at him. The sleeve of his coat covered the back of his hand. Everyone else's need was greater than your own. He smiled when Hilary said: ‘Not every time, I don't.'

‘We'll let you win,' Sam promised.

‘All right, then,' he said. ‘My last game of Monopoly!'

‘Leave him alone, you little vampires.' But Judy took the baby from Sam, because she knew Tom would play a game or two with them.

22

‘While waiting for the ship at Piraeus I walked along the boulevard by the docks looking in shop windows, but nothing interested me. Since leaving you and Rachel I was an empty skin, able to move but not think, capable of facing the future, but not daring to wonder about the past. I felt part of a system, if such it can be called, that was pulling me to the centre, sleep-walking me to a conclusion that can turn out to be nothing except a real beginning. It's a relief to be without options at last.

‘Like the normal passenger I was I loitered till it was time for the ship to sail, but felt more lost than I'd ever been during my sailor life when I hit a funny port and wondered how to pass the time before going back to my cabin.

‘I was in a state of well-being, but sorry to have left you, knowing from experience that it is always more depressing for those who stay behind, no matter what the circumstances. To that extent I felt twinges of guilt and uncertainty. In fact it might be true to say that what I didn't feel would hardly be worth writing about! I was also obviously sorry at leaving Rachel, though perhaps on her part she'll miss me less at the tender age of three months than she would if I had left my departure till much later. The quicker the move, the healthier for everyone.

‘The ship didn't leave until two o'clock, and much loading had to be done, as I saw from a stroll along the quay. I probably walked around the docks to the shipping office to get my ticket checked more times than was necessary. The ship would be full. People had boxes, bundles, plastic bags, rucksacks, suitcases, trunks, and cardboard boxes tied up with string. Bedding (including a whole bedframe) was going up the stern gangplank. A line of cars was waiting to go into the hold. All luggage was being searched, in case a terrorist should plant something there.

‘I strolled back to the dock gates. There was still no hurry. I repeated to myself that I was going to Israel, said the word over and over like an incantation, and a port worker who went by must have thought I was going a bit crackers in the midday sun. Perhaps I was. Perhaps I am. I would get to Haifa, so then where would I go? Jerusalem is the capital city of Israel, I said, therefore it is natural to go to that place. But would I lodge there for good, or fix something up near the desert, or work in orange groves on some kibbutz or other, or stay close to the sea? Sooner or later I would have to make myself useful. Where would I pray if the need arose, as it surely will? I'd find a synagogue – no difficulty there! – to give thanks for my arrival. I had my
yarmulka
, so they would let me in. I hadn't left my old life in order to settle for less. Israel was, I told myself, the only country in the world I could go to after England. It will supersede England in my mind – a great change, but it will be done. For once in my life I have to prove myself right in a fundamental choice, not out of fate, egotism or force of circumstance, but due to a religious reason that is at the very middle of me.

‘I walked back to the boulevard. A tram was going by, and I almost ran after it. Both sections turned a corner before I could make up my mind to get on. My body and spirit played a game, joining forces to perform a trick I didn't fall for. A car bonnet passed close as I crossed the road, its hooter screeching. The heat was terrific, coming out of an emptiness I thought had been left behind. (They said there was a heat wave in Greece at the moment.) That emptiness was caused by my leaving you and Rachel. I sat on a seat by some stunted bushes, a huge ship rearing on the other side of the railings. It is impossible to leave anything behind. The past stays with you, or that's how it feels at the moment, a part of your irreducible torment that you see reminders of again and again, memories that render down and become one more contribution to the unconscious.

‘The whistle of a departing ship reminded me that time went on and there was less possibility of retreat, no matter what going forward might mean. We will survive, the three of us, whatever happens, because in our different ways we have already learned never to be afraid.

‘The ship set off through industrial mist and sailed among the isles of Greece. I ate a meal, slept for an hour, then looked from the rail at rocks and ashy mountains poking their summits out of the clear blue mirror of the sea. It was only now, seeing the last markings of my departure from what to me was the old world, that all nerve seemed to go, and the questions began. The effect was terrifying, striking at the most vulnerable part and at the worst moment – as of course it must. I had not expected it, when I ought to have done, though even if I had braced myself, the effect would have been no different. There was little use denying or avoiding it. I was down among the jellyfish, make no mistake about that.

‘Everything I thought appeared to me as the truth, and the denials that immediately countered it were also nothing but the truth – as if the experience I had let myself in for was determined to change even the basic chemistry of my mind. The journey so far had been full of interest. I had been on the move, and there had been little time to think, but now, not only was I alone, and a passenger who had nothing to do while crossing the sea, but I was back on a ship, in the place where I had spent most of my life before finding out who I was and what my connection with the past had been.