Her Victory

  He sat down. ‘It’s something to think about.’

  ‘No,’ she said scornfully. ‘If you have to think about it, it’s impossible. One doesn’t think about a thing like that. The thinking has already been done, though you haven’t noticed, I dare say.’

  She distrusted herself. No, she didn’t. All motives had a thousand strings attached. Ignore them. No, don’t ignore anything. To ignore is to fly in the face of God. Did she merely want to get out of the country because she couldn’t bear to bring Rachel up in this same old place? Would going anywhere else be better? She couldn’t bear to be seen pushing her about in a pram, a woman of her age with a child on the street, and old enough to be its grandmother! If she stayed she would really drop her out of the window, all love pulled away to create a vacuum wherein she didn’t know what she was doing. And that would be the end of them all. In any other country such an action would be unthinkable. The idea surfaced vividly to convince her, but seemed merely another motive that, unable to deny, she had to contend with and finish once and for all.

  Nor could she bear to love two people at the same time. It was impossible for peace of mind, and tore her in two. Sleeping with Judy was like being back with her mother, a sensual restoration of all senses, which she ought to have outgrown long ago. Nothing but a sea-change would suffice. And yet again, why should she? She would always love women if she felt like doing so. She was tired of learning lessons when it was perfectly safe for certain parts of her to drift the way she wanted. All the same, you could not give in to such distractions if you wanted to guide your life in any positive way.

  They were surface reasons perhaps, excuses and nothing more, yet the words had come spontaneously because whatever reason had put them there would never be defined. If it wasn’t already obvious, yet utterly buried at the same time, there wasn’t a reason and never would be. She didn’t know which it was, and didn’t care to. They would go to Israel, or she would return to living in a room of her own. She had said enough. He must do the rest himself.

  ‘Is that an ultimatum?’

  It was.

  He knew what he wanted, he answered. Nobody knew better, but he didn’t know whether what he wanted was what she really wanted, that was the trouble. Even though she had suggested accurately enough that he wanted to break off the present life – and he did, if only to end it – he had to be sure she wanted it as well. The idea that she was merely, if unintentionally, tormenting him could be countered for the moment by saying nothing. Be still, and know that I am yours, he wanted to tell her.

  He said it.

  She already knew.

  It was irrelevant, he felt when he had said it.

  So did she.

  So much was.

  How could it not be?

  But to the extent that you had to say it, it wasn’t.

  Nothing was.

  Forget it.

  Know that even love was something that had to be endured, a fact which, when realized, did not make him unhappy. Rather, it made him feel less numb than before he had said it.

  He said it again to himself while walking through the park by the Pavilion on his way back from the public library on a fine April morning. She wanted him to go on his own, and then they would see, but if he did he thought he might lose not only her but Rachel as well. It was too much to ask.

  But the chance had to be taken. He was never anywhere except in the middle of a storm, the never-ending turmoil of life. Momentous decisions had always to be considered and quite often taken, a state of mind not unfamiliar, nor even unwanted. Life at sea was like that, and the whole of life was being at sea, until you went under into the dark. There was no reason not to smile about it, as he did when catching a glimpse of himself in a shop mirror on his way through The Lanes. She wanted him to go to Israel by himself, and then he could tell her when she and Rachel were to follow, and though he couldn’t bear to leave his two-month-old daughter for as much as an hour, he would brace himself to do it.

  In other words, he would leave his daughter with a feeling that recalled his mother’s action when she had taken a last look at him in his cradle before going out of his grandfather’s house never to come back. That event, and the one that felt too uncomfortable to contemplate, were close enough to produce a crushing overlap as he turned and walked with more speed along the seafront, a memory still too near for a proper decision to be made.

  But having said it, it was as good as done. Speech was the point of no return. Discipline would take over. Otherwise what were words for? Blue sea worried the shingle with a roar before going out again. There was one last journey to travel, and nobody could say he was afraid to make it.

  Sunlight was doled on to the water by a wind manipulating gaps in the clouds. Glistening acres came and went as he looked from the end of the pier. Smokestacks were alive, energy and purpose in their acute angles as when he had first been mesmerized by the expanse. They ran on diesel now and were plain blocks battling their way, but all alteration was progress, one way or the other. Sloth, which was sinful in the eyes of the righteous, meant in him a self-induced form of death that was far worse.

  He had given no proper and binding answer. To make it firm – so that he could not turn back for fear of damaging his pride to the extent that he would never have the spiritual strength to move more than five miles beyond where he lived for the rest of his life – they would have to talk about his departure before Judy and the children.

  21

  ‘Israel!’ Judy exclaimed. ‘You must be stark raving bonkers!’

  They talked on Saturday afternoon when it was raining too hard for any of them to go out. Pam thought Judy might be envious, and also afraid, because she seemed, after all, less adaptable to change than any of them. What she or anybody thought was unimportant. While holding Rachel to her chest so that she could look at the children playing Monopoly on the floor, Pam felt that once changes began out of a centre of consciousness, as they had with her on leaving George, there was no stopping further developments spreading in their wake. She was no longer safe or happy at being settled. She had opted for adventure, and even the final conversion, wanting the new life to go on, no matter how disturbed others would be by her wanderings. If they were in the same state would they consider her? She doubted it, and would not blame them if they did not.

  Judy stood by the mantelpiece, a hand at the side of her face as if Tom’s information had struck and left a mark there. ‘There’s a war every five minutes,’ she said.

  ‘They have them everywhere these days,’ he answered, ‘or are likely to. You’re never far from the riot, or the terrorist psychopath with his so-called explosive device. There’s no use worrying about that sort of thing any more, or using it as an excuse not to act. If anything happens to me, all I have goes to Pam, but if we both end up dead before our time, which I consider unlikely, by the way, then whatever’s left goes to you. You’ll be taken care of, in any case. As I’ve told you before, there’s enough for everybody here.’

  She knew he was Jewish, but even so, didn’t you only go to Israel if, say, some nut like Hitler came up from the sewers? ‘They don’t even have proper frontiers,’ she said.

  ‘They will have. Every country starts that way.’

  ‘You like to make things all neat and tidy,’ Judy said. ‘But that’s not what I mean. Your sort of tidiness makes me want to puke. You can’t move us around like pieces on a chess-board. I love you both, so I don’t want either of you to go.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ Pam began.

  Judy put a hand to the other side of her face, as if that cheek was also in pain. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, not straight away.’

  ‘I can’t get a proper answer on that matter,’ Tom said. ‘Things aren’t as tidy as you think.’

  They looked at each other helplessly, as if they would have rushed to be physically close had no children been by. Judy went into the kitchen. ‘I’ll leave you to sort yourselves out.’

  H
e settled himself in an armchair, and lit a cigar.

  ‘I think you offended her,’ Pam said.

  He puffed smoke towards the fireplace. ‘What? By talking about money? Possessions?’

  She looked out of the window, her back to him, raising her voice to make sure it was heard in the kitchen. ‘Perhaps. But it’s you she doesn’t want to lose. She doesn’t care about anyone else. You can hardly leave yourself to her in your last will and testament.’

  He put his cigar in the ashtray and stood. ‘Is that why you want us to go?’

  ‘I wish you’d sort yourself out,’ Hilary said to Sam. ‘All you’ve got to do is sell Piccadilly, and one of your railway stations, and then you’ll have some money left to go on playing.’

  Sam groaned. ‘I know. But I don’t want to lose any of my complete sets.’

  ‘She told me about it last night,’ Pam said, after a silence. ‘What happened when I was in the hospital.’

  He held her shoulders, feeling the warmth under her blouse, and looking down over inflated breasts at Rachel peacefully sleeping. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  She was surprised that it did not matter. And she told him so. ‘Somehow, it doesn’t, not with Judy.’

  Nevertheless, he thought, it was best forgotten. ‘I’ll be unhappy to leave Rachel,’ he said softly, ‘and more than sad to leave you. I’ll also regret leaving Judy, and those two.’ He nodded towards the children on the floor. ‘But I have to go, whether or not I want to, or whether or not you now want me to. I’d have come to it of my own volition, otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to your wish, suggestion or command, or whatever you like to call it. But it’s easier for me to go knowing that you won’t be left here alone, and that you and Rachel will come to me after a while.’

  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.’