‘Look Robert—soon we’re going to have grass like that.’
No turf for us; Guiseppe the second, with a washing up bowl under one arm, carefully broadcast the seed over the tilled soil and soon—lo and behold, the first velvety fronds of new grass appeared—a pale green haze over the entire garden. We were not to tread upon this first precious grass for many weeks, but that was a small sacrifice.
Next we bought fruit trees, which Guiseppe implanted along the edge of the newly dug vegetable garden, and rose bushes under our great trees in the centre of the drive. It was the Garden of Eden all over again.
* * *
Robert was nearly three and I hadn’t done anything about play-school—an essential for such an isolated child.
I received the necessary push one day, when Carol rang to say her son was starting at a newly opening play-school in September and would Robert like to join him. I liked the idea of Robert having support in the shape of friends already known to him. But there were disadvantages; the school was run in a church hall, and I wondered how much Robert would learn of Christian practices and whether he would be alienated from his Jewish background. But in the end, I found that he only learned to recite:
‘Thank You for the food we eat.
Thank You for the world so sweet;….’
This innocent prayer in no way conflicted with the Jewish blessings that we sometimes taught to Robert:
‘Blessed art Thou, Oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has created the fruit of the earth—of the vine—of the tree.’
The world did indeed seem sweet that year, for so many of our problems had been solved. Michael’s business was taken over, and though he sacrificed the freedom of being his own boss, it was for the security of a salaried post. We shared the car and I was no longer a prisoner in my own home, and I discovered the special joy of creation in the garden.
Everyone gave us things to grow; I was thrilled to receive dozens of daffodil bulbs from my sister-in-law, Sonia, for there is something very special to me about flowers the colour of sunshine, which show themselves when winter is only just departing.
Auntie Ethel, a keen gardener herself, gave me half a dozen rootless fuchsia cuttings from her garden in Hove, where they grew in profusion. She often took cuttings and simply stuck them in the earth and they flourished. I always regarded it as a small miracle that they would create their own roots in an attempt to survive. In fact, much of what took place in the garden was miraculous to me.
The pleasure of our efforts was marred for me by a cloud—a small irritating worry that grew and grew as the months went by. Until I could put it out of my mind no longer.
Every time I snuggled up to Michael in the night I was conscious of a lump in his chest almost under his arm. I wasn’t sure of how long it had been there—but it was too long.
Many times I had said to him, ‘Shouldn’t you find out about that?’
‘Yes, I will—I’ll get round to it some time.’ came the reply.
I was in the doctor’s surgery about five weeks before Christmas as I had a suspicion that I might be pregnant. Casually, I mentioned the lump.
‘Should he come and see you?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘Yes, he must see me,’ my doctor replied briskly. ‘Get him to come along as soon as possible.’
In the four weeks that followed, Michael saw the doctor, attended hospital, was X-rayed and it was arranged that he should go into hospital for exploratory surgery on the day after Boxing Day.
Unasked, the Aunts from Hove suddenly rang and offered to stay with me while Michael was in hospital, and what a lift to my spirits that was.
Michael, Robert and I spent Boxing Day with Geoffrey and Karla and most of the rest of the family. Towards the evening, it started snowing and, reluctantly, we decided to leave early.
‘I’m sorry to push you,’ said Michael, recognising as always my enjoyment of these family ‘get-togethers’. ‘But we dare not take any risks about getting back tonight.’
As it happened, the roads had been efficiently cleared and we got home without difficulty. We didn’t rush to get up, next morning. Even though the Aunties were coming, I thought it was more important for Michael to have an opportunity to relax rather than to have a tidy house and meal prepared.
By the end of the afternoon, the Aunties had arrived, we had eaten and we had watched a film on the television (which by now had an aerial). Michael was almost too relaxed to be true—it was I that was on tenterhooks, for he showed no interest in getting to the hospital.
I kept warning him that he’d get told off if he was late—there were a remarkably large number of bossy hospital sisters. I warned him he must expect to stay in bed in his pyjamas and behave himself. I offered to bring him chocolates, fruit, sandwiches and, based on my father’s many experiences of hospitals, eggs for breakfast.
Because of my reluctance to drive all the way back from the hospital on my own, we parked the car at Guildford station and took a train the rest of the way. From there we walked the half-mile journey to the hospital itself, in almost pitch darkness, through an area entirely covered by snow. The chest hospital, originally built for sufferers of T.B., had been placed deliberately in an area of open fields, where the air was pure. Unfortunately, as far as I was concerned, it was terrifyingly isolated.
In the warmth of the hospital, we were greeted by an attractive and pleasant young woman, who was very far from the bossy sister image that I had presented to Michael. She offered us both tea and apologetically brought Michael some poached eggs on toast, which they had tried to keep warm for him, not knowing what time he was coming in.
She went through the usual great list of questions to be answered on entering hospital, and Michael joked his way through them, so that when she got to ‘Religion’ and he said he was Jewish, she thought he was still joking and turned to me for verification.
Then she tried to get me a taxi, but having failed, to my surprise, she allowed Michael to take me back to the station. This was like no hospital I’d ever been in.
Unfortunately, we lost our way and arrived at a completely different station, one stop further along, and eventually parted company, waving to each other from opposite sides of the track.
When I arrived at the hospital next day, after Michael’s operation, he was sleeping like a baby, but as I bustled around with my supplies of fruit and chocolate, he gradually awoke and I helped him to sit up.
The friendly sister appeared with a small glass of liquid, which she proffered to Michael.
‘Here’s your jungle juice,’ she said smiling. We were both intrigued and Michael took a tentative sip, and with the facial expression of a connoisseur of wines, tasting an unusual flavour, offered it to me.
But the sister shook her head swiftly—‘No, not you—not in your condition. It’s just a pain killer.’
I smiled—Michael apparently hadn’t been able to resist talking about the pregnancy, although it was only two months under way. Despite the hormone tablets I was now receiving from the doctor, I was wary and reluctant to tell the news to anyone until the three-months' hurdle had passed.
In the meantime, it was the other lump that was the subject of my concern and I now asked the sister when we would know the facts about this.
‘It’ll be examined by the Path. Lab in the morning,’ she told us, ‘but it seems almost certain that it’s just a fatty lump.’
During those few days, the Aunties ran the house, cooked meals, ironed clothes and looked after Robert, and I was able to spend hours at the hospital, instead of the usual inadequate half-hour.
The car behaved badly, like a dog without its master, developing a slipping clutch and a flat battery, so that each night I despaired of either starting the thing or getting it home from the station.
The Aunties, being non-drivers themselves, were not fully aware of the difficulties I was having, but they worried about me driving through the snow-covered, isolated country roads, and always welcomed me home with relief at the end of each excursion. On my arrival, they had a meal waiting for me and they would tell me anecdotes of how they had coped with the household chores, and how Robert had advised on where to find tea-towels and saucepans and other necessities.
Robert couldn’t always quite work out which aunt was which, though Auntie Betty was short and plump and Auntie Ethel was taller and slimmer, with glasses. Nevertheless, they were special to him and he was happy to act as host to them. They, in their turn, loved to tell me of the clever things he had managed to do in my absence at the hospital.
By the end of the second day, it was confirmed that the lump was benign, and when I drove home from the station, my heart was a great deal lighter.
After I had made numerous reassuring telephone calls to the family, the aunts and I played cards into the night. I got up late next morning, and before the beds had been made or Robert changed out of his pyjamas, a strange car appeared and Michael was deposited at the doorstep by a volunteer driver.
It was a wonderful surprise to have him returned to us so quickly, but I was most upset by his immediate criticism of the state of the house and Robert; he was always obsessed by unmade beds, and hated me to show up in a bad light to other people, even intimate family such as the Aunties.
Triggered off, no doubt, by a mixture of relief, irritation and pregnancy, I burst into tears, and despite the Aunties’ efforts to console me, sobbed and sobbed until Michael was quite contrite.
He didn’t believe that the car was unreliable, of course, and despite being warned by the hospital not to drive immediately, he took it out and arrived home some time later towed by one of the plumbers, to whom he had had to walk to get help, with that day’s newspaper under his sweater to provide extra warmth in the latest snow shower.
The next day, the Aunties left, having done all they could for us. It was New Year’s Eve and this time, there really did seem cause to welcome the coming year with optimism.
11. Rita
I had fully expected to carry on taking hormone tablets throughout my pregnancy, but once my usual danger point had passed without problems, I received no more, and as the time passed, my confidence expanded.
By the time I was four and a half months pregnant, I was quite happy to contemplate a trip to Colchester with Michael to deal with a business problem. It would be a full day trip, so we decided to leave Robert with Sonia and collect him from her home in the evening.
The night before the planned trip, the telephone rang as I was watching the television. I realised from Michael’s end of the conversation that it was Roger, and I remembered then that Ruth’s sister Rita was in hospital, having had a major operation on her hip. I had intended to write to her, but I hadn’t got round to it.
I could tell from Michael’s monosyllabic responses that something bad had happened. Childishly, I pretended to continue watching the television, so that I could delay the moment of knowing the truth. But I knew that only the most serious of circumstances would cause Roger to speak directly to Michael without my being called to the telephone to chat with Ruth.
Michael came off the telephone and I asked, ‘What is it?’
‘Carry on watching the film—I’ll tell you later,’ he replied.
His obvious attempts to spare my feelings and his delay in telling me the news only reinforced my intuitive knowledge that Rita, whom in our school days I had often called my ‘adopted little sister’, was dead.
Encased as she was in plaster after surgery, Rita had been unable to move. In spite of her youthful resilience, a blood clot had killed her. All the efforts of the doctors to resuscitate her had failed. And even her own tremendous spirit, which throughout her childhood had brought her through operation after operation on her polio-crippled leg, had failed her this time.
It was around a year since I had last seen her, when she had unexpectedly visited us at the bungalow with a new boyfriend. My job, my marriage and her stay at University had caused us to lose contact, so that information about each other was passed through Ruth.
Now, nothing seemed to have changed, and despite the knowledge that a tragedy had befallen a girl in her mid-twenties who had always had my affection and interest, I was hurt by the realisation that I could not feel the pain that was justified by the loss of a loved friend. The fact of her death was only a set of words. I could feel no difference between the death and her simple absence from my life, and because of the unreality of the situation for me, I knew I could not conceive of the pain that Ruth and her mother were experiencing.
But I had built up a store of memories over the years, and these would remain; starting with the little girl who dragged an iron-clad leg and heavy boot as she walked by the side of her tall sister to primary school; through our teenage years, when, as little sisters do, she taunted and teased us, as we chatted and made cursory attempts at our homework; one well-remembered occasion in 1959, when we were all teenagers, when we got off the Tube after a concert, to find ourselves stranded in one of the last of the London smogs, and had to walk the couple of miles home, dodging cars abandoned on the pavement. We insisted that she kept up with us, for with the arrogance of the young and fit (or perhaps because instinctively we knew it was the right thing to do), we never gave her special treatment but expected the maximum effort from her. And she responded by giving it.