To Live in Peace (11 page)

By the time Maurice in New York bought flowers for Kitty for the New Year, and Sarah in London put the finishing touches to the table she had put up in her living-room to accommodate Josh’s family, the PLO had left Beirut, the remains of Bashir Gemayel had been laid to rest in a hill-top church, and to the disgust of Jews throughout the world Pope John Paul the Second had received their avowed enemy, Yasser Arafat, at the Vatican. Following the PLO’s withdrawal, it was the received opinion of Israelis that an assault upon the Palestinians in the camps – which still sheltered some two to three thousand terrorists – might be expected in revenge for the President’s murder. The names of the camps, as yet unknown to Kitty, and her family, who sat down to celebrate New Year 5743, on either side of the Atlantic, were Sabra and Chatila.

At Sarah and Josh’s with the company crammed round the trestle on the random collection of borrowed chairs, the subject of the Lebanon had been avoided until Beatty, who had a reputation for it, had opened her mouth and put her foot in it. Looking round the table – with Josh at its head, to whom she had said no more than to wish him a tight-lipped happy New Year – at the remnants of her father’s family, Rachel was aware of an altering of perspective, of shifting sands. It seemed so very little time ago that these gatherings, these holy day
get-togethers
, had been at her parents’ table, when her father had been very much alive and his sisters and their respective spouses had been forces to be reckoned with. She remembered that once she had been terrified by her Aunt Beatty with her opinions on everything; now, as she
looked at her aunt, she seemed not only to have lost her husband, the long suffering Leon, by whose death she had been silenced, but to have an air of defeat about her, as if she had given up. Beatty had mesmerised with her tongue. Now that it no longer wagged so incessantly, she seemed like an old woman, her clothes slightly shabby as if she no longer cared, capable of no more than passing the time of day, the wind completely gone out of her sails.

Next to her, Mirrie, who had for as long as Rachel could remember fulfilled the traditional role of the spinster aunt – filling breaches in the exigencies of the family – sat with her pale eyes vacant, and although she smiled when you spoke to her you felt that she was not really there. She had never been all that bright but Rachel had always been fond of her Aunt Mirrie and was distressed that there were fears now for her safety in the flat where she lived on her own, and talk of putting her away in a home.

Frieda, too, seemed not the same. It was not exactly that she had become smaller, but she appeared (and it was not just the fact that the chairs were packed close together) to take up less room. Even her husband Harry, who spent his life on the golf course, looked less ebullient, less fit.

“The leaf falls that the bud may grow,” Rachel thought – and she was not pleased with her conclusion – the decay of autumn is necessary for the coming of the spring, and sooner or later the non-viable material round the table would be removed from the gene pool to make way for the young. As Debbie and Lisa and Mathew, in their ignorance of the place they occupied in the inescapable order of things, fidgeted and giggled, Rachel, recalling her own youthful inability to sit still at her father’s table, understood how they felt and realised with a shock that now she too had become one of the “aunts”. She wondered
if she were terrifying, as once she had found Beatty terrifying, and whether her nieces and nephew found her as formidable as at their age she had found Aunty Beatty.

Tucking into Sarah’s tsimmes with dumpling, which although prepared to the same recipe bore only a pale resemblance to her mother’s, Rachel wondered if the remnants of her parents’ generation gave any thought to their mortality or to the three new lives which would eventually replace them. In her womb – as in Sarah’s and Carol’s – her unborn child, presaging her own demise, awaited the moment of his birth and she realised with surprise, and for the first time, that with her perception altered by the small miracle which was taking place within her, she was seeing her aunts as people, as individuals who might too have feelings such as her own.

Alec, who to Carol’s distress had arrived late at Sarah’s from Godalming, was helping the two-year-old Mathew with the dinner which Sarah had so painstakingly cooked but which patently lacked the love which was the main ingredient with which her mother had seasoned it, when Beatty said: “I see the Pope’s been entertaining that Arafat!” and sparked by her unconsidered remark the dry tinder of the assembled company was not slow to ignite.

Frieda’s husband, Harry, who was in the antique silver business, said: “All at once he’s everyone’s darling while nobody’s got a good word to say for the Israelis.”

“Scratch a yok you’ll find an antisemite,” Beatty, who had a poor opinion of non-Jews, said. “They’re having a field day over this Lebanon business.”

“‘Peace Now’ want to negotiate with the Palestinians, no matter who represents them,” Josh said.

“‘Peace Now’,” Rachel said scathingly. “They’re sick in the head. When everyone was fighting the Germans did they have ‘Peace Now’? When the French were fighting did they have ‘Peace Now’? Begin is ‘Peace Now’. He’s clobbered the Syrians, hit the Iraqis in their reactor, made peace with Egypt, is in the process of wiping out the PLO, and when he puts a few more settlements on the West Bank there’ll be peace and quiet there, too.”

“Begin should not be allowed to pursue his fanatical aims unfettered,” Josh said.

“Sometimes I wonder whose side you’re on.”

“It’s deeply hurtful, Rachel, to be accused of being anti-Jewish every time I happen to disagree with you.”

“What about the Warsaw Ghetto? They wanted ‘Peace Now’, but they left it too late. If they’d had the uprising when there were still half a million Jews left – instead of a few thousand – it might have been a different story. We can’t afford to sit and wait until they come and wipe us out.”

“We’re always the scapegoats,” Beatty said, warming to her theme. “As soon as there’s trouble anywhere…”

“Frieda and I have been thinking of buying a little place in Netanya,” Harry said. “Perhaps we should all go.”

“Rubbish,” Rachel said. “If every Jew in the world moved to Israel tomorrow there is no reason to suppose that antisemitism would disappear.”

“There’s been antisemitism ever since they accused us of murdering little children and drinking the blood,” Harry said.

“Uncle Harry!” Carol glanced at Debbie and Lisa who were sticking forks into the holes of the white lace tablecloth which Carol had lent Sarah from her mother’s collection for the occasion.

“The strange thing about the blood libel,” Sarah said, speaking from authority, “is that it was directed against the first people in history to outlaw human sacrifice, and the only nation in the Near East to prohibit the consumption of any blood. It’s all there in Genesis and Leviticus and Deuteronomy.”

“No Jewish mother ever so much as killed a chicken with her own hand,” Beatty said with satisfaction.

“Beatty’s right,” Harry said. “The blood libel’s the one thing we can’t be guilty of. Every Jew in the world who’s been brought up amongst Jews knows that it’s an indisputable fact…”

“You’re implying that we are guilty of all the other crimes we’ve been accused of,” Rachel said, “from the Crucifixion of Christ to the Plague – which killed hundreds of Jews as well as Christians – to the absurdity of Stalin’s doctors’ plot.”

“It’s the moral demands made on us,” Harry said. “The vocation of Israel which the world hates.”

“Does that embrace the murdering of innocent children in the Lebanon?” Josh said.

“What about the Jewish children,” Rachel said, “who died as the result of PLO attacks in Galilee, in Kiriat Shmona, Ma’alot, Misgav Am….”

“Since when have two wrongs made a right?”

“You know perfectly well Begin never gave orders to kill children.”

“Nevertheless more children have been killed already in Beirut than in thirty years of terrorism in Israel.”

“I am not sitting here,” Rachel said, standing up.

“We’ll change the subject,” Patrick said, pulling at her skirt.

“The Israel Defence Force,” Rachel laid down her napkin and stared at Josh, “a civilian army, does not, as you know perfectly well, aspire to kill children.”

“Look what you’re doing!” Carol said, pointing to Debbie and Lisa who were watching Rachel and Josh wide-eyed.

“Unless he apologises, I’m going home.”

“I haven’t the slightest intention,” Josh said. “You know I’m right.”

“I’m sorry Sarah,” Rachel addressed her sister-
in-law
, and went to the door followed by Patrick.

“Sit down and have your dinner,” Aunty Mirrie said, waking up for the first time. “He doesn’t mean it.”

“No more than Begin’s army, firing at the children,” Josh said. “Like the Nazis they were following ‘orders from above’.”

“Trust you, Beatty,” Harry said when the front door shut after Rachel and Patrick, leaving two empty chairs and an uncomfortable silence at the table.

“What did I do?”

“Started the conversation. You know Rachel gets all worked up.”

“How should I know? I never see her. I never see anybody since Kitty left. Nobody comes to see me. I don’t see a soul except Mirrie and she’s not much use to anyone. I’m like a pariah as far as this family’s concerned.”

“We took you to the cinema,” Harry said.

“A lot of language,” Beatty said. “Disgusting. I’d rather stay home and watch television. You’d think he’d shave now and again.”

“Who?” Frieda said.

“Arafat.”

“There you go again,” Harry said.

In bed Josh said: “I suppose you think I’m to blame.”

Sarah put her head on his shoulder. “You’re entitled to

“Which you don’t go along with?”

“I suppose that if somebody continually throws stones at you while you’re sitting in your garden, it’s not unreasonable to go after them in the hope of a bit of peace and quiet.”

“Except that there have been no stones thrown for over a year. You can’t say a word to Rachel.”

“You do goad her.”

“I’m sorry she walked out. You cooked a splendid dinner.”

“Aunty Beatty didn’t think much of my tsimmes.”

“Aunty Beatty doesn’t think much of anything.”

“Do you think they’ll accept me at the Beth Din?”

“On the basis of tonight’s dinner they’ll probably make you Chief Rabbi. Come closer.”

“In eight things excess is harmful and moderation beneficial: travel, sexual intercourse, wealth, work, wine, sleep, hot water (for drinking and washing) and bloodletting.”

“Bloodletting was not what I had in mind.”

“According to the Oral Tradition – presented to Moses on Mount Sinai along with the written law – the sexual act was recognised as serving functions other than procreation. Cohabitation is not only permitted but required, as a mutual obligation of husband and wife during pregnancy.”

“Point taken.”

“The Talmud also provides a list of the times when a wife could expect her husband to be with her for the purposes of what you have in mind. Twice a week for labourers; once a week for ass-drivers; once every thirty days for camel-drivers; once every six months for sailors…”

“What about dentists?”

“It doesn’t mention dentists. Not in so many words. I love it when you do that.”

“And this?”

“A wife can demand that the sex act be performed while they are both naked,” Sarah said, removing the pyjama trousers in which Josh slept, “and if the husband insists on being clothed…”

“Not another excuse for divorce?”

“Why did Auntie Rachel go home?” Debbie said, as Alec sat on her bed to say goodnight to her.

“She didn’t feel too well.”

“She was fighting with Uncle Josh.”

“You fight sometimes with Lisa.”

“You told a lie.”

Alec said nothing. The girl in the saloon bar’s name was Jessica and she lived in Lower Eashing next to the riding stables. They had got into the habit of meeting, for lunch in the King’s Arms or in the car park behind the supermarket where he waited for the Land-Rover with its chrome horse mascot to turn into the space beside his. They were never at a loss for words. Alec told her about Carol and his children. Jessica’s husband, who was in oil, was away; Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia.

Yesterday Alec had driven out to their cottage with its bowed windows, its old slate roof, its climbing roses and wistaria, and parked his car behind the Land-Rover. He saw Jessica in a faded blue shift, strong back, stomach, arms, legs – “the legs are vital,” she had said, “they must be like steel” – through the wrought-iron gate, against the summertumbled urns, for the first time without riding habit. Even in her bare feet she was taller than he.

There was food on a rickety table in front of the swinging hammock. Alec couldn’t remember eating it nor drinking the wine, although the bottle was empty. The late bees investigating the antirrhinums, the nicotiana, the over-grown tubs, intercepted the stillness with their droning. He put his hand to Jessica’s ivory neck and released her chignon.

“Let’s go inside.”

He had been late for his clinic, had not paid much attention to his patients.

After the love Jessica had been the first to speak.

“How superbly we go together,” she said into the spent afternoon.

“You sound as if you’re talking to your horse.”

“Alec…how long did you say your wife had been away?”

In the light of the past hour it seemed that Carol had never been there. He had watched Jessica dress – breeches, white shirt, tall black boots – tie back the lustrous hair, secure it in its net.

“You’ll come tomorrow?” She took her hat from the valet stand.

He had to touch her. Could not stop.

“I’m going to London tomorrow.”

He didn’t explain about the New Year.

“You’ll have to come early then.”

She said it for both of them.

It was the reason he had been late. He had come straight from Jessica’s arms in the cottage bedroom with
its sloping ceiling, its view from the pillow of cornfields with their poppies, to Sarah’s. He had told Carol they had been busy at the clinic and that he had been late finishing his house-calls. She had no reason to disbelieve him.