Laura had organised her proposed motherhood as carefully and methodically as she had everything in her adult life. The announcement of her pregnancy to her stunned relatives was coupled with the information that she had arranged for the father to be a Jew. This they learned with mixed feelings, as they did her decision to name the baby after her newly-departed grandmother.
Shirley alone seemed unaffected by the chapter her daughter had added to the family history and, to Laura’s surprise, actively supported her. Laura had only to call and say she had a foreign assignment on her calendar and her mother would immediately drive to London to look after the child.
Sometimes, Shirley collected little Bessie and took her to Manchester. By the time Bessie was twelve months old, she had her own special corner in which to play at the Sabbath tea parties, and was regarded fondly as “our Bessie”, instead of being thought of as “our Laura’s fatherless child”.
In London, Marianne’s flat had become, for Bessie, a second home.
“I wish my mum would come and live in London,” Laura said to Marianne when she called to pick up her daughter one wintry afternoon. “Then I wouldn’t have to trouble you when the baby-minder lets me down on a working day.’
“It’s no trouble,” Marianne smiled. “What I didn’t get written this afternoon, I can do tonight. But I bet your mother would move to London if you suggest it.” Marianne stroked the little one’s plump cheek and cuddled her close. “She’s nuts about this kid.”
“But Bessie can’t be her whole life, can she?” Laura said wisely. “Since the divorce, it’s been a whole new scene for Mum, and I wouldn’t want to tie her down. She’s in Russia at present.”
“Do they have fashion shows there?” Marianne quipped.
“My mother isn’t quite the empty-head you’ve always thought her,” Laura said sharply.
“But you must admit she’s always been clothes mad.”
“She still is. But what has that got to do with anything? She’s gone to Moscow to visit a ‘refusnik’ family.”
More and more Jews were now establishing and maintaining contact with their oppressed Russian brethren. Every synagogue had an active committee for the purpose. But Marianne could not imagine her cousin devoting herself to the dogged, unglamorous work it entailed, which was a far cry from the fund-raising Zionist social functions that had occupied Shirley in the past.
“You and my mother still think of each other the way you were when you were young,” Laura told Marianne. “One only has to hear the comments you make about each other, to know it. But people change, Marianne. And you must be somewhat out of touch with the family in Manchester, these days, or you’d have known all about Mum’s ‘refusnik’ work with the 35 Group.”
“I’ve been very engrossed in my work,” Marianne defended herself. “Which was why I didn’t see Ralph’s bankruptcy coming – and got hell from my mother for not doing.”
Laura wiped her daughter’s sticky fingers and removed a splodge of chewed-up rusk from Marianne’s sweater. “You deserved it, Marianne. If I were someone’s wife, I’d consider it necessary to take an interest in every aspect of him and his life. You’ve fallen down on your job, mate!”
“As you’re not married, it’s all fine for you to lecture me,” Marianne retorted.
“And the responsibility you’ve neglected is part of why I’m not,” Laura countered. “What are you doing to help Ralph sort himself out?”
“Nothing. He wouldn’t let me. My husband is a very independent man.” Marianne went to draw the curtains against the wintry twilight and smoothed them absently. “Needless to say, with my earnings we’re not on the breadline. The problem is Ralph himself. What he’ll do from now on.”
“Where is he now?” Laura inquired.
“Can’t you guess?”
“Out looking for a job.”
“And at his age – and in the present economic climate – he’s unlikely to find one,” Marianne said. “Which go-ahead ad agency is going to take on a fifty-eight-year-old artist? Those that aren’t cutting down on their staff are after young blood.”
“I’ll have a word with my grandfather about Ralph,” Laura said. “Grandpa could certainly use something to give him an interest and Ralph could run it for him.”
“Ralph is no businessman, Laura.”
“I had in mind an art gallery, Marianne, where people like me could exhibit our work. And Ralph – it would give him an incentive to paint again – could also show his. I have a feeling my grandfather wouldn’t mind being a patron of the arts,” Laura said with a smile.
“You’re making this sound a dead cert!” Marianne exclaimed, though she knew Laura had always had David eating out of her hand.
“You know me, Marianne,” Laura said briskly.
Marianne surveyed little Bessie. “I should!” With Laura, things were no sooner said than done.
And arranging Ralph’s future proved no exception. She called Marianne that evening to discuss it.
“I just called Grandpa.”
“What took you so long?” Marianne joked. But her cousin’s concern for Ralph had moved her deeply.
“Grandpa went for the idea immediately. I didn’t have to persuade him, Marianne. I suggested it would be best if he left you and me out of it. That he should put it to Ralph as if it’s his idea.”
“That was very wise of you, Laura.”
“Do you think Ralph will go for it?”
“Oh yes,” Marianne said unhesitatingly. To her husband, the opportunity Laura had created for him would seem like a raft to a drowning man.
“There’s just one little snag,” Laura said. “Grandpa wants the gallery to be in Manchester.”
“Is that what you call a little snag?” Marianne felt as if the ground had suddenly gone from under her feet.
“If you’re not willing to move there, we’ll have to forget the whole thing,” Laura told her.
Was Marianne prepared to return to the midst of the family? Have her everyday life complicated by their nearness; by the interfering and backbiting and the obligatory demands from which she had fled more than thirty years ago? She loved them all dearly, but the shackles they had once represented to her now made themselves felt again. Then she thought of the other aspect of family, the caring and doing for each other which Laura and David were illustrating right now and was bitterly ashamed. Uncle David was willing to expend his hard-earned money on Ralph’s salvation –
“I wouldn’t do it if I were you,” Laura cut into her thoughts. “But I’ve always been a selfish bitch.”
Me too, Marianne said to herself. What other kind of woman would think twice, when it came to securing her husband’s future? Which included his well-being. Because she could do nothing practical to help Ralph, she had buried herself in her work in order to shut out his gloom. But now there was something she could do.
“Tell your grandpa to put the proposition to Ralph,” she told Laura.
Three months later, The David Sanderton Art Gallery opened in Manchester and Marianne had a new home, in Knutsford.
“Mother will never forgive me for not living in Whitefield, around the corner from her,” she said to Ralph over breakfast one morning. “She keeps saying I might as well still be in London, as she can’t pop in to see me.”
“Half a dozen times a day!”
“Exactly. And I’d never get any work done. How are you putting up with Uncle David breathing down your neck?” Marianne smiled.
Ralph poured some more milk on his muesli. “Oddly enough, sweetheart, I never feel that he is. Though when he was younger I was never very comfortable with him.”
Marianne recalled her uncle’s once-bombastic manner. “Who was?” She drank some coffee absently. “He’s a bit pathetic now, isn’t he?”
Ralph thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think Uncle David will ever be that.”
“Perhaps he’s just mellowed with age,” Marianne said.
“Not that either. He’s still capable of tearing a strip off people when he thinks it’s necessary,” Ralph told her. “And with the rotten workmanship that’s around these days, when we were fixing up the gallery it was.”
“All the same, Uncle David has changed,” Marianne declared. “He isn’t the bossy-breeches he was once.”
“I think it’s simply that it’s taken him until now to accept that the other person is entitled to a point of view,” Ralph said. “That others are capable of doing things as well as he would do them himself. When we mounted our opening exhibition, I expected him to interfere with everything I did, though he knows nothing about art. But he just sat in a chair and let me get on with it, as if he had decided to trust me.”
And knowing that someone of Uncle David’s calibre has faith in you, has done you a power of good, Marianne thought, noting her husband’s cheerful expression.
Since leaving London, Ralph had metamorphosed into the man he had once been. He would soon have a picture of his own to exhibit, Marianne reflected with satisfaction. On Sundays he painted at home and on weekdays in a studio at the rear of the gallery, to which local artists came to chat and show him their work.
At last, Ralph had come into his own, she thought gratefully and got up from her chair to kiss him.
“What’s that for?” he grinned.
“Because I’m happy for you.”
Ralph eyed her quizzically. Despite her age, there was still about her the “gamine” quality that had captivated him the day he met her, and the same youthful zest.
“Your life’s changed pretty drastically, hasn’t it, sweetheart?” he said guiltily.
“A writer can write anywhere.”
“But you miss London. And your pals, there. Don’t you?”
“So, what?”
“You made a bloody great sacrifice for me, that’s what. And don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
Marianne could not deny the obvious. “Not half as big as the one you made, years ago. Setting aside your personal hopes, to be the breadwinner for Martin and me.”
Ralph rose to leave. “Isn’t that what love is all about?”
For Ralph it always has been, Marianne thought, as she waved goodbye to him from the garden gate. But she had viewed his settling for commerce, instead of pursuing his art, as a weakness.
If lack of ruthlessness could be called weakness, then that had indeed entered into it, she mused, gathering up some beech leaves from the porch, before re-entering the house. But Ralph’s love for his wife and son, for whom he had undertaken to provide, had played the major part and Marianne had not given him credit for that. She had lived with him for thirty years without really appreciating his finest qualities. Until now.
She was about to begin her day’s writing stint when her mother telephoned.
“You haven’t forgotten it’s your grandma’s birthday on Sunday, Marianne?”
“No, Mam.” This was Esther’s third reminder!
“What are you wearing for her party?”
“Sky-blue-pink, with a yellow border,” Marianne joked.
“I’d rather you did, than you should turn up in your old jeans. And it’s just our luck that the National Front are having a march that day.”
“Nobody will skip the celebration because of that, Mam.”
“But some of the younger end will probably join the protest demonstration – and turn up at the party with black eyes. Also, Shirley’s in Russia again.”
“Don’t worry. She’s due back tonight.”
“Supposing her plane gets held up? And Kate’s plane from Israel, and Margaret’s too?”
“Martin and Matthew and our Arnold could all have tyre blowouts on the M1, driving to Manchester from London,” Marianne said. “But I doubt if they will. Why are you driving yourself daft with worry about hypothetical calamities that could keep everyone away from Bobbie’s birthday party, Mam? You didn’t use to meet trouble halfway.”
“How do you know I didn’t. Since 1940-odd you haven’t lived up here.”
“But I’ve seen plenty of you.”
“A few Yom Tov weekends my daughter calls plenty. Maybe it was, for you. And the times I did see you, I didn’t spoil it by telling you how I feel about this, that, and the other, Marianne.”
“You’ve made up for it since I came back! I have to ring off, Mam. I have a play to finish.”
“Me, I’ve got enough drama in real life. It’s very important for everyone to be there on Sunday. Your grandmother will be ninety-nine.”
“And on her next birthday, she’ll get a telegram from the Queen.”
“If she’s here to receive it.”
A chill settled in Marianne’s stomach.
“Even Sarah Sandberg can’t go on forever, Marianne. That’s why Kate and Margaret are coming. It would be tempting Fate to leave it until next year.”
After her mother had rung off, Marianne could not settle down to work. Mam would probably telephone again, soon – to tell her she had just broken a cup, or some such mundanity. Like it or not, Marianne was now firmly back in the extended-family set up, which living in London had made it possible for her to avoid. Though she was still separated from her relatives by sufficient miles to make dropping-in impossible, her presence in the north had re-established her as part and parcel of their everyday lives.
Did she mind? It was not conducive to work, but she had to admit there was a comforting warmth to it that she had forgotten existed. It reminded her of her childhood, and that the threads which held the clan together, spun not just of family loyalty, but of Jewish traditions, had withstood the test of changing times.