When I Was Otherwise (29 page)

Part Five

39

It was a Saturday. Marsha was having lunch at Notting Hill but had left a cold meal in the fridge for her brother and sister-in-law and some chicken soup in a saucepan on the stove. “So all you've got to do is warm it up, very carefully,” she'd said to Dan. “Only turn the heat on low and remember to stir, so that the soup won't catch. I've put a lid on top of the saucepan and the wooden spoon is lying across the lid. You may need a little salt and pepper. I rather wish I wasn't going.”

On departure she reminded him again. “Whatever you do, Dan, check afterwards you've turned the stove off properly. I haven't left a line of makeup, have I? Now, are you sure I can trust you with all that?… I hope it isn't going to rain.”

Daisy sat down in a peevish mood.

“Well, you'd think they would have picked her up, wouldn't you? His own mother! And you'd even think they might have popped their head around the door to say hello!”

“But they always drive her back,” said Dan.

“Oh, yes, and then leave her at the gate! Well, I ask you! They've probably forgotten what this house
looks
like from the inside. I suppose they must take fright at the thought of all these wallpapers.”

Yet it didn't end there. Not by any means.

“And, anyway, you'd think they could have asked us
all
. That would have been the obvious
thing, the only
decent
thing, wouldn't it? But some people just wouldn't recognize the only decent thing, not if it pulled up right in front of them on horseback—wearing a mask, waving a pistol, politely demanding their money or their lives.”

“Oh, I think I'm really quite thankful, old girl, to be stopping here at home.”

“Yes, well, you may be, but I most certainly am not! After all, you were born a Stormont;
I
wasn't—praise the Lord!”

“Even poor Marsha didn't much want to go,” smiled Dan. “Especially as she had to have all the bother of preparing our own meal first—though she always does that, of course. It wasn't worth it, she said. But she could hardly get out of it this time: it must be a good four or five weeks since she last went. More.”

“
Weeks
, did you say? To me it feels like
years
—centuries—I can't even recall when I… And, no, it certainly wasn't worth it, if you ask me!” She glared at what was set in front of her.

“In fact,” she said, “I can't think why they didn't leave Marsha out of it altogether. Why they didn't just ask
me
and have done with it. Then we'd all have been satisfied. Except for one thing.”

“What?” Dan had the feeling that she might have said something which unfortunately required an answer.

“What? Well, that I don't suppose I would have gone—naturally! There's only one way, in my opinion, of teaching people not to be so casual: turn down all their invitations, let them realize what they're missing! What
is
this muck?” It was tinned macédoine, mixed up with salad cream. “Is it vomit?”

“Omelette?”

Dan would
not
get himself a hearing aid! No more would Marsha. They were both of them so stubborn: even when they had her own long-term example before them. In Dan's case, however, it was as much laziness as obstinacy. He would shrug equably and say, “Oh, Daisy, what will any of it matter ten or twenty years from now?” It made her feel so angry. “It's today that counts; today—today! What sort of fun do you suppose it is for me?” Yet all the same Dan was marginally less irritating than his sister. At least
he
owned up to his defect. Sometimes.

“Talk about the deaf leading the deaf!” she said. And you could! Nobody would hear it! “I asked if this were vomit,” she enunciated with poetic, almost drama-school diction.

“Oh? One rather hopes it isn't,” answered Dan.

“Ah—
hope
,” she observed cryptically. “Well, hope makes a good breakfast but it won't be so hot for your supper. Didn't you ever hear that proverb?” She failed to say where lunch fitted in, exactly. “‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here!' That one's equally as apt. Yes! Did Dante come from Hendon? Or perhaps I should say—did Dante come
to
Hendon? Alderton Crescent. Number ten.”

She smiled at him, sweetly.

“Daisy's Inferno.”

Dan responded to her smile. He gave a satisfied laugh. “Do you know, I was just thinking it must be such ages since you and I last had a meal together in this room? I mean, of course, without Marsha.”

“Why? Have we ever?” All other times over the past six or seven years, when Marsha had gadded off to Notting Hill or Harrow, Daisy herself had probably been out. “Have we ever?” she repeated.

“No—perhaps not.” He relapsed into his normal silence, a shell-like cave of peace and gentle murmurings, from which he'd amiably stick out his head from time to time in the sanguine yet unfounded expectation that he would not encounter problems.

Daisy gave a sigh. She said: “Without Marsha? No. There's always been Marsha. There always will be Marsha. There always will be about to be Marsha. For ever and ever, amen! And heaven help the lot of us! But quite right, too—and very nice—and that's what
I
say, dear, don't you?” It had seemed, for a moment, that Dan might be on the point of raising some objection. “Her brother's keeper. Her sister-in-law's keeper. Tell me, dear, did she always—as a child—show an exceptional interest in going to the zoo?”

“But, no, this can't be the first time that you've eaten in this room without Marsha. Did you and Henry never dine with us? Oh, you must have.”

“I did come here once—I do seem vaguely to recall—there was a cake, some sort of cake—but no, dear, I don't suppose I'm meaning Henry—” she chuckled—“now why on earth should I remember that?”

40

“Then, Daisy, you must come to lunch!” Dan cried. “Ah, there's a box just over there.”

But his number was engaged.

He tried at a second box halfway up the hill and again when they arrived at Hampstead underground. “I suspect she must be talking to Mother!” He laughed, a shade uncertainly.

This uncertainty, however, had nothing to do with whom Erica might or might not have been talking to. It was because he was now worrying that he could have acted a little rashly. People often told him he was inclined to be impulsive.

At Hendon Central there seemed no point in ringing up a fourth time: the house was barely minutes from the station. When they got there Erica had finished on the telephone.

“Darling,” Dan called. “Darling, we have a visitor!” He attempted to radiate optimism, confidence and cheer: goodwill toward all men and a reminder that it was the duty of God-fearing people everywhere always to bear in mind the Ten Commandments. “Darling, you'll never guess who I've just bumped into: Daisy, of all people! And I've invited her to lunch; I hope we can do something with the loaves and fishes? Knowing you, I'm sure we can!”

“Yes, the Germans always make such excellent hausfraus,” nodded Daisy encouragingly; “at least one's always heard they do; no matter what their
other
deficiencies may be,” she added, with a tactful lowering of the voice.

Erica arrived from the kitchen. She had caught Dan's silent plea and had responded to its urgency. She kissed Daisy on both cheeks and held her warmly by the hand.

“Daisy, how wonderful to see you! It seems like years and years!”

“That's probably,” she replied, “because it
is
years and years!” She always thought of Henry when she said anything like this.
Well, I suppose one reason might be, just might be
… It still had the power to make her chuckle.

“But how well you look! Marsha wasn't exaggerating, was she?”

“I don't know, dear. You'd better tell me what she said. Fit to be the guest of honour, no doubt, at a chimpanzees' tea party?”

Dan laughed. “My word, Daisy, it's not like you to fish.” He felt relieved and happy. “Or is it?”

It was the questioning of it which annoyed his sister-in-law. “Oh, I do believe you've got fish on the brain!” she announced, acerbically. “Or else it may be water!”

“Why?” Dan was disconcerted by this sudden alteration in mood.

“Well, you started off with
loaves
and fishes. And as if that wasn't enough…,” Daisy's attempt at self-justification floundered, “…well, I shouldn't think poor Erica would even understand the reference! And why should she, indeed?”

“Oh, but I do understand the reference, Daisy; though it's more a question of ham and salad this particular lunchtime—and
that
will surely stretch. I hope you like ham and salad?”

“Ham?”

“Yes, the Sabbath, you see. We're strictly kosher on a Saturday.”

And also somewhat heavy-handed in the humour department, thought Daisy. Or in a word: strictly Teutonic.

However. As it was now after one and the meal was ready and Erica obviously hadn't enough
savoir-faire
to offer any guest a drink, they went straight into the dining room and took their seats at the table—some silly ass of a maid having already set another place.

“Speaking of such things,” said Daisy, aware of the visitor's obligation to entertain, “do you ever encounter any kind of anti-Semitism, dear? I mean, here in the backwaters, away from Oswald Mosley and that fearful gang of his.”

“No, not a great deal, Daisy; not in its more overt forms, anyway.”

“Well, I'm pleased to hear it. I can't stand people who harbour that sort of prejudice. It quite infuriates me. Besides, dear, you don't really look Jewish, you know.” Daisy smiled at her, reassuringly.

Then she put her head on one side and dispassionately considered Erica's appearance: fair hair—rather lifeless, not at all like Andrew's, clearly she ought to brush it a little more!—too large a chin, heavy features that would soon become a copy of her mother's (why, in the beginning, had she given it twenty years?); pretty enough in their way, she supposed, if you didn't mind insipidity or, not to put too fine a point on it, vacuity; an almost Junoesque figure that made poor Dan look even more of a spindleshanks than he already did; and—particularly unfortunate of course—an aura of unEnglishness which somehow left you with the impression that, when you'd last set eyes on her, she might have been wearing traditional peasant costume and had her hair coiled up in braids and yodelled.

“Well, do I pass?” asked Erica, with a gentle smile.

“You do,” said Daisy. Because, for goodness sake, what else was there to say?
Yes, through the eye of a needle! With flying colours! Every time!

But she had far more respect for herself when she didn't feel the need to deal in even small hypocrisies. She went back to what they had been saying. It was a topic which didn't promise very much in the way of entertainment, but for the moment it was all they had, and she must simply do her best with it.

“No, I just can't abide the prejudices of narrow-minded people,” she continued. “I daresay I'm a bit off my noddle in that respect. But I truly can't.”

“Attagirl!” applauded Dan. “That's our Daisy!” He discovered that he spoke with pride—and secretly smiled to recollect his earlier apprehensions.

His sister-in-law felt gratified but wanted to show she could handle praise maturely; by not letting it destroy impartiality.

“Mind you, dear, at the same time you do have to be fair and admit that in some neighbourhoods—take this one, for instance—whilst not at all condoning it, you can better understand how people occasionally do feel twinges of anti-Semitism.”

“Can you?” asked Erica.

“Oh, yes. My word! On any busy morning you've only got to spend two or three minutes in the Golders Green Road—which I grant you isn't
quite
such a backwater as Hendon—two or three minutes being jostled and elbowed and all but trampled down by hoards of screeching fur-clad matrons, most of them nearly bent double by the weight of diamond rings and noses and nail polish—particularly I mean, Erica, when you're just a little shrimp like me, not a great big Amazon like you who can no doubt always give every bit as good as you get—and make no mistake about it, dear, I admire it if you can, indeed I do…well, where was I now?…yes,
that's
the kind of thing that really gets the Jews a bad name, if anything does.”

There was a silence. She gradually sensed that perhaps her audience wasn't wholeheartedly behind her.

“Not that I mean, you understand, that anything actually
does
. Get the Jews a bad name. Necessarily. Or ought to. No!”

She suddenly espied a still better avenue of escape.

“Of course, I'm just telling you the type of thing so many people
say
; and personally I find it quite disgusting. Hit a man when he's down—give a dog a bad name—you know I don't approve of that! No. I myself believe that it's not the fact of their
Jewishness
which is to blame. How could it be? I've met some extremely nice Jewish people in my time. No. I ascribe such vulgarity not to their being Jewish, these women, but to their being foreign. Continental. That's the truth of it. At most you could say, if you really wanted to, that it's the combination which proves so unfortunate.”

She nodded and smiled at the two of them, went on with her meal, and felt that she had handled it quite neatly.

Yet the silence continued.

“This ham is
very
good,” she said, to keep the party going. Honestly! Why did it all devolve on her?

“I'm not at all ashamed of being Jewish,” said Erica, her pale face now looking slightly flushed. “Nor of my being continental.”

“Dear Lord, of course you're not!” said Dan.