‘Don’t sound so sorry about it,’ she said to Sam, ushering them into the kitchen for their suppers. ‘Then you can go to your rooms and do a bit more homework before sleep time.’
After putting Rachel to bed Pam was exhausted. ‘She drains me.’
‘They all do,’ Judy replied. ‘It never stops, one way or another.’
‘I remember it from before.’ She went from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other – a wicked see-saw impossible to jump from. But that’s how she was, feeling no guilt about it, nor any particular wish that it would end.
‘We did the same to our mothers, I expect.’
Tom was setting the table in the dining-room for their supper. The large oil painting of his Uncle John was back above the mantelshelf, but the piano had gone so as to make more space. It was the mainstay room in which they could eat, live, or study.
She fed Rachel. If she threw her out of the window would she die? I dropped her. I was looking at the view while getting some fresh air. She moved. She slipped from my hands. Terrified at the nearness of disaster, and full of love for her daughter, she shut the window with a bang, then held her gently to stop her crying. She recalled a similar urge with Edward, wanting to end it all, even then. But at least now she knew what she was doing, or what she was not going to do.
‘Is this life everything?’ she said to Judy the following day, when the sun shone full into the large room.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it can’t be, can it?’
Judy put her arms around her. ‘You’re insatiable.’
‘I mean, it’s just not possible.’
‘What more do you want?’ There was a tone of exasperation in her voice. ‘You could live on your own and be a rag-picker, if you liked. Or you could do the Open University. Or you might try going into industry – whatever that means. There isn’t much, unless you want to join the army, or be a stunt-rider on the Wall of Death. Of course, we could get a loan and run a boarding house, or manage a pub in Cornwall, or open a boutique like everybody else. Life’s short. Options are limited. It’s too early to go around the moon on a camel and write a book about it. Anyway, you’ve got a lovely kid, and you’re in love with Tom. You’re not supposed to be on this dissatisfaction kick.’
She was in the mood to say whatever she felt. ‘I’m in love with you, as well.’
‘I know, and that’s marvellous, but don’t tell me too often, because Aunt Judy’s got her own sales-and-wants column roving around inside her. You’ll feel better when Rachel’s a year or two old. I love you as well, but it can’t mean as much as your love for Tom and Rachel, and sooner or later you might have to choose between me and them.’
‘There are too many damned choices.’
‘So there ought to be.’ Judy took a bottle of red wine from the drinks cupboard, fixed in the corkscrew, and raffishly winked at her as she pulled. ‘This will help us to relax.’
‘When I was with my husband,’ Pam said, sipping the wine, ‘and thought I could never get away from him, a story kept coming to me, repeating itself over the years. Funny how I’d forgotten it, and it suddenly springs on me again now. I must have dreamed it more than once, and the scene built itself up when I concentrated hard to pull it together. A heavy plank of wood was floating down a river in flood. At one end the husband stood, and on the other, the wife. Both wanted to get off and save themselves, either from the flood or from each other, or both. If the husband jumped first, the plank would tip and the wife would probably drown, and he didn’t hate her so much that he wanted to kill her. If the wife leapt free the husband’s end would go and he would drown, and she didn’t despise him sufficiently to want his death. They passed the occasional sandbank or overhanging tree, when it might have been possible for one or the other to have made a grab for it. But neither could jump. And they were coming to a five-hundred-foot waterfall. Only a miracle could save them. If not – over they’d go.’
‘Sounds familiar,’ Judy said. ‘But go on.’
‘Well, during the time when the plank was floating, they could have moved to the centre and got closer to each other. They could have then discussed matters with regard to jumping together, so that both would have been saved – or at least had a chance. But the torrent made them unwilling and afraid to move. They thought the effort wasn’t worthwhile, because they’d be able to jump free at any moment, and it wouldn’t have been necessary to get close anyway. It was obvious they should never have shared that floating plank, no matter what they thought they were escaping from. But they had, and that was that. It was called a romantic story, which was bound to have a tragic ending. That’s how the woman saw it, but she didn’t tell him. How he saw it, she wasn’t much interested, because he was no longer there to ask in any case. They had leapt from the plank half-way down the waterfall, neither of them thinking of the other. They had gone their separate and individual ways to death, which were more or less the same except that in every kind of distance they were very far apart. They missed the sound of the river, and the passing moments of tormenting indecision, and the noise of that fatal waterfall getting nearer and nearer. It made their life exciting, but was absolutely intolerable at the same time.’
She was silent for a while, then Judy said: ‘Does all this mean you’re going back to your husband, after all?’
‘No. That’s unthinkable. Finished. But in five years I don’t want to feel like that with Tom.’
Judy refilled their glasses. ‘You won’t, though I understand your fears. Tom’s the sort who won’t let that happen. Plenty of knock-about life is in store for you yet, I’m sure.’
‘But will he ever feel like that with me?’
‘I don’t expect so, but who knows? None of us is God.’
20
The choice came to Pam as a blinding revelation one night after Rachel was in her cot and Judy had gone out with the kids to the cinema. She looked over his shoulder at the Hebrew grammar and said: ‘You’ll never know the language properly until you go to Israel to live, and hear it spoken all around you.’
‘I don’t suppose I will. Yet I went into the local synagogue last week and heard it there.’
‘That’s liturgical. I mean as an everyday language.’
On most Friday nights a solitary candle burned on the dining-room table. The children liked it, and even Judy was tolerantly quiet. Tom wore a black cap hardly visible on the back of his head, and hurriedly murmured a prayer. He opened a bottle of wine and, to the children’s delight, poured a glass for everyone. That was the extent of his Sabbath.
‘Haven’t you ever thought about it?’ A recollection forced the question into her mind, of seeing the preacher clearly from ten years ago, in the chapel she had wandered into like a sleepwalker. She had found comfort in the strange words, and had gone back love-sick week after week to hear this unprepossessing yet mysterious man tell of the virtues of ancient and modern Israel.
Tom admitted that he had considered a visit to his second country, but so many things had happened to divert him from such an idea.
‘I don’t mean a visit,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to live there? After all, your mother was Jewish, her mother was Jewish before her, and so was her mother. It would make sense, absolutely.’