Sarah was ensconced behind her two outsize teapots, happily surveying the familiar Sabbath afternoon scene. Her parlour was a spacious room but today did not seem large enough.
The raven heads and redheads who were Sarah and Abraham’s descendants were cheek by jowl with Sigmund and Rachel Moritz’s smaller brood who, except for the absent Miriam, all had fair or mousey colouring. Present, too, were those who had become part of the clan by marriage. Two of whom were Gentiles, Sarah reflected, glancing at Lyn and Ralph – something she could not have imagined herself accepting. But the pain incurred by not doing so was worse, she had learned.
Her gaze roved to Matthew and Margaret, who were helping themselves to sandwiches at the octagonal tea-table. How good it was to have Arnold’s wife and children within the fold at last. David’s recovery was not the only answered prayer for which Sarah had fervently thanked God in shul this morning. And if Arnold would one day turn up here with them, her cup of joy would be full to overflowing.
“Why aren’t you eating?” she asked Martin. She had insisted that the children be allowed by their parents to have tea in the parlour, as this was her first Shabbos home from America. If Sarah had her way, they would never be relegated to the kitchen.
Martin patted his stomach. “Who could eat tea after a lunch at Grandma Esther’s?” He eyed the table. “Just my luck I’m not hungry when I could have smoked salmon!”
“Auntie Bessie brought it for the sandwiches, so today would be a real party,” Sarah told him. The expensive delicacy was not usually part of her Shabbos afternoon repast.
“In the States, they eat it for breakfast,” David conveyed. “Only they call it lox.”
“I don’t even get it for supper,” Martin told everyone.
Marianne laughed. “What he means is we can’t afford it.”
Shirley smiled complacently. “I suppose a person has to live within their means.” She eyed Marianne’s grey tweed skirt, yellow sweater and sensible shoes. You could put together a smart outfit even if your budget only ran to Marks and Spencer, but Shirley’s writer-cousin had never been interested in clothes. Only Marianne would turn up at their grandmother’s Shabbos gathering dressed for a country hike!
Peter was studying his wife, comparing her careful elegance with Marianne’s casual appearance. Shirley had on a brown wool-crêpe dress she had bought from Kendal Milne’s model gown department that morning, and the string of cultured pearls her father had given her when her son was born. She was chicness personified, from her bouffant coiffeur to her tan alligator court shoes. But the joy of living that had once softened her artifice was no longer there.
“A person can live without luxuries,” Sarah smiled to Marianne. “So long as you’re happy, what does it matter?”
“It doesn’t,” Peter said.
Rebecca got up from the sofa. “I can’t remember a single Shabbos afternoon when Ma didn’t say, ‘So long as you’re happy’.” She handed her teacup to Sarah to be refilled. “As if happiness were dependent upon this, that, or the other! Happiness is different things to different people,” she informed her mother-in-law. “There’s no universal recipe for it.”
She returned to her seat to drink her tea but slopped some of it onto the carpet and the others noted that her hands were trembling.
This was the first family gathering Rebecca had attended since taking the overdose and everyone had studiously ignored her strung-up demeanour. They were well practised in doing so. She had shown signs of her private trauma for years, though never so markedly as now.
“Stop pretending there’s nothing the matter with me, when you all know I’m shot to pieces!” she exclaimed. “You think I’m a nutcase, don’t you?” she said stridently.
Sarah was thankful that the children had just left the room, to play in the attic. “Nobody thinks anything of the kind,” she said to Rebecca.
“Why don’t you and I go and have a nice quiet chat in the dining-room, Rebecca?” Bessie suggested soothingly.
“You’re my pal, Bessie. Don’t you start humouring me, too.”
“If you don’t feel well, I’ll take you home, Rebecca,” Nathan said quietly.
“What for? I don’t get treated any differently there than I do here. Everyone, including you, seems to think they have to be careful with me – just because I woke up in the night with a muzzy head and took some more pills to make me fall asleep again!”
Leona got up and left the room. Frank Moritz put down the book he had been pretending to read and followed her. A moment later, Henry left, too.
“What am I? A leper or something?” Rebecca said with a wry break in her husky voice.
Nathan exchanged a glance with Ronald.
Rebecca noted the glance and laughed. “Don’t bother putting your medical hats on, you two! I’m not ill. Just bloody miserable. But my husband will probably diagnose me as paranoiac, after the things I’ve just said.”
Lyn Klein, for whom this was the first full family gathering she had attended, stared into the fire to hide her embarrassment. Arnold had told her that the atmosphere at Sarah’s tea parties sometimes rippled with undercurrents, but she had thought he was exaggerating. She could feel the animosity between Rebecca and Nathan. Sigmund and David looked as if they were forcibly restraining themselves from speaking. Shirley and Anne were carefully devoting their attention to playing with the cat, which was sprawled on its back at their feet. Marianne was examining her fingernails and Ronald studying the carved cornice as if he had never seen it before.
“You’ll get used to it,” Ralph whispered in Lyn’s ear. “It took me quite a time to.”
“A fine homecoming for Mother and me this is!” David boomed, unable to contain himself any longer.
His daughter-in-law went to sit beside him. “Don’t get upset, Pop, it’s bad for you,” she said. Initially, she had not liked David, but time had revealed to her the soft centre beneath his habitual ebullience.
David patted her cheek. “You’re a good girl, Diane.” And a more affectionate one than my daughter, he thought, glancing at Shirley, who had seemed cool – or was it strained? – with him since his return home.
“Tell us some more about New York,” Esther requested.
Sarah heaved a sigh of relief. The conversation was back on an even keel.
“David’s told us hardly anything,” Bessie said, giving him a sidelong glance.
“Dad isn’t himself yet.” Ronald eyed his father’s weary posture and pale countenance.
“Who isn’t?” David said.
“It will take you some time to recover your full strength,” his son answered professionally.
“Nonsense. I’ll be back at the factory next week.”
“Isn’t that a bit soon, Dad?” Shirley said.
“For what?” David asked edgily.
Sarah prepared herself for the next bout of conflict. She could feel it coming.
Laura Kohn, who had entered and seated herself on her grandfather’s lap, wound her arms around David’s neck. “Don’t worry about Grandpa, Mummy,” she smiled to Shirley. “He won’t have to work at the factory for much longer, will he?”
Shirley and Peter glanced at each other surreptitiously.
“Little piggies have big ears,” Peter declared ruefully.
David set Laura on her feet and rose ominously from his armchair. “Would you like to tell me what my grand-daughter knows, that I don’t?”
His daughter and son-in-law remained silent.
“What’s been going on at Sanderstyle while I’ve been away?” he asked Bessie.
“Would I know?” she shrugged. “I’m only Shirley’s mother and your wife. When it comes to the business, the two of you tell me nothing.”
Two angry patches of colour appeared on David’s high cheekbones.
“Don’t get worked up, it isn’t good for you,” Nathan warned him.
“All of a sudden our Nat is showing concern for me!” David said, venting his feelings upon him.
Nathan turned on his heel and left the room.
“If we go on like this, the parlour will soon be empty,” Lyn whispered to Ralph.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he told her in an undertone. “At first, it’s a shock to us untemperamental goyim. So is how quickly they get over it.”
Over the outburst – but not the grievance, Lyn thought. It seemed to her that her husband’s family was caught in a web of long-standing grievances. But Arnold had carried his too far.
“I’m waiting for you to explain,” David said to Shirley and Peter.
“We’ll go into it another time,” Shirley replied.
“We’ll go into it now! What have you got planned for me? An early retirement?”
“Not in the way you mean,” Shirley said.
David gave her a look that caused her to quail. “How many ways are there?” He sat down in his chair, as if the surge of strength that had enabled him to rise in anger had ebbed away.
“How dare you do this to your father, Shirley?” Sarah demanded imperiously. “What kind of daughter are you?”
“A better one than he gives me credit for. But Dad isn’t going to believe it.” Her father was looking so agitated, she had no option but to tell him what she must here and now. With her interfering relations present to take his side. And before she had forewarned her mother and brother.
Marianne, whom Shirley have never considered a friend, let alone an ally, came to her rescue. “Why don’t the rest of us clear out of here for a few minutes?” she said tactfully. “Let Shirley and Peter talk to Uncle David privately?”
Hannah Moritz, who remained her usual calm self whatever the circumstances, agreed. “I was about to suggest it.”
Shirley gave Marianne and Hannah a grateful smile. “I’d appreciate it, if nobody minds. But I’d like Mam and Ronald, and Bobbie to stay.”
“I wouldn’t dream of leaving,” Sarah said. There was nothing affecting any branch of her family that she did not make her personal concern.
“Get on with it,” David said to Shirley when their relatives had departed to the dining-room. He listened without interrupting, whilst she outlined “the golden opportunity” that had come his way.
“Is that what you call it?” he said when she had finished speaking. “Maybe it is. For you and Peter to get rid of me.”
“There’s rarely a sole reason for anything,” Peter said. “To be entirely honest, which I’m afraid my dear wife is not being, I wouldn’t mind if Sanderstyle no longer belonged to the family. It’s no secret that I personally have no emotional involvement with the firm.”
“Too true!” Shirley cut in nastily.
“It might remove some of the strain from our relationship if you hadn’t,” Peter told her. “But my main reason for hoping you’ll accept the offer is that you’ve worked too hard for too long,” he said to David.
David did not doubt his son-in-law’s sincerity, though he had begun to doubt his daughter’s. “I appreciate your consideration for me, Peter. But I’m not an old man, even though I probably seem one to you. And next to my family, my business is my life.”
“We don’t need telling that,” Shirley said.
David gave her an icy glance. “Which makes what you’re suggesting all the more distasteful to me. The pattern of your life wouldn’t be changed by the takeover, I gather from what you’ve told me. But you don’t seem to have given a thought to what your father would do with his days.”
“Get under her mother’s feet,” Bessie said. “And I don’t think I’d like it.”
David permitted himself a weary smile. He ought to have expected his wife to see things from her own point of view.
“Dad isn’t the kind to retire,” Ronald said to his sister. “If you’d mentioned this to me in advance, I’d have told you to forget it.”
“No doubt, as you don’t have to work with Dad,” Shirley retorted. “He’s a very difficult man.”
Sarah could remain silent no longer. “As he has you to deal with, I’m not surprised. What you deserve, Shirley, is that one day your children should be this way with you.”
“They wouldn’t need to be. Not about the business. What Peter calls my emotional involvement with it isn’t that at all. It’s just my sense of family responsibility. I’m not sentimental about Sanderstyle, like Dad is. If it was mine, I’d sell it without a second thought.”
Mark had come quietly into the room to fetch his sweater – the attic was a draughty place – and paused by the door, arrested by what Shirley had just said. “You wouldn’t really sell Sanderstyle, would you, Mum?” he asked her accusingly.
“We seem to have another big-ears in our family, Peter!” Shirley exclaimed impatiently. “If Laura hadn’t heard what wasn’t intended for her, this matter could have been dealt with in a businesslike way, at the office.”
“You won’t let Mum sell Sanderstyle, will you, Grandpa?” young Mark appealed to David. “Because I want to work there, with you, when I grow up.”
David gazed into the little boy’s earnest dark eyes. “So that’s your ambition, is it?” he inquired thoughtfully.
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
“And I’m happy to hear it. Now run along and play, Mark.”
David waited for Mark to leave, then turned his attention to Shirley. “The discussion is over,” he declared shortly. “And don’t ever bother reopening it.”
“So, one day you’ll drop dead at the factory,” Shirley shrugged.
And your son, not you, will inherit the business, David decided. Ronald had not wanted to come into it and to Shirley, he had distressingly learned, it meant nothing more than pounds, shillings and pence. But she would never have the power to sell her father’s life’s work to strangers.