Chocolate Girls (55 page)

They laughed, and Edie settled herself carefully on the rug as well, tucking her dress under her . . .

‘You look lovely, Ede,’ Ruby said.

‘Ta – so do you.’ She finished arranging her skirt, then looked bashfully up at Ruby. ‘Who’d have thought – eh?’

Ruby nudged her. ‘I know. And he’s a lovely fella, your Anatoli. So romantic.’

‘I know—’ Edie reached for little Naomi’s plump, warm hand. ‘I can’t believe how kind he is. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up soon.’

‘No—’ Janet said. ‘It’s your turn now.’

‘When’s it going to be mine?’ Ruby asked, lugubriously. ‘Eh – where’ve the fellas all got to, anyroad?’

‘Martin said something about making tea,’ Janet said. ‘At least that was when he disappeared about half an hour ago.’

‘Oh, he’s probably dozed off in a corner somewhere,’ Ruby said. ‘Anyway, Anatoli’s gone off as well. What are those two up to, d’you think?’

Edie was puzzled by this as well, but then she caught sight of Martin coming out of the house bearing a large tray of tea cups. ‘Look! Good for him, he
has
done the tea!’ she cried. ‘Ooh, I could just do with that.’

Martin brought each of them a cup and the three of them stayed chatting on the rug, playing with the little girls.

‘I don’t know how you can live all the way over there,’ Ruby said to Janet. ‘America was bad enough.’

‘But you were unhappy there. That’s probably why you didn’t like it.’

‘Yes – I s’pose so,’ Ruby said gloomily. Then she grinned. ‘Eh – never mind. There’re always more fish in the sea! Did I tell you about Kevin . . .?’

‘Oh Ruby,’ Janet cried. ‘You’re unbelievable!’

‘No, just unlucky!’ she pulled a mock doleful face. ‘Oh – it’s nice to be with you two again. Nothing like old pals.’

‘A toast!’ Edie joked, holding up her teacup, and the others joined in. ‘Wherever we are we must keep in touch – pals, eh?’

‘Pals!’ the other two agreed. And solemnly sipped their cups of tea, before erupting into laughter again.

‘Where did you get to this afternoon?’ Edie asked.

She and Anatoli were lying naked under the sheets in Linden Road. They were leaving for a few days away by the sea the next day, but had decided to celebrate into the evening with their friends and not to rush away on their wedding night. After all, Janet and Martin wouldn’t be here much longer. Late that night, warm from love-making, they lay together in Edie’s bed, in the soft light of the room.

‘I was talking to Martin.’

‘But you were in there for ages!’ Her curiosity was aroused. ‘What on earth were you talking about?’

‘Well – we were making a plan . . .’

‘
Plan?
’ she said, rather huffily. ‘What on earth d’you mean?’

‘OK – promise me you will just be quiet for two minutes while I tell you – with no interruptions?’

Edie nodded, vigorously.

‘Right. OK. It’s very simple. Frances said we could live here for a time after we were married in any case. She has a tenancy with the Bournville Village Trust – so for the time being we can keep that on. I was having a few words about the details of this because now Frances has passed away we need to organize things. I am selling my house in Wimbledon. No, you said you’d be quiet!’ he protested as Edie was almost bursting, wanting to ask questions.

‘Soon we can look to buy a place of our own,
but
for the time being it means that we also have some spare money. So – what we will do first is to buy two tickets to Tel Aviv, and go and visit that son of yours.’ He grinned, as Edie was pressing a hand over her mouth to try and stop herself exploding with excitement. ‘What do you think of that, Mrs Gruschov? Umm?’

Israel – July 1959

‘Edith, my love. Wake up now – we’ re nearly there.’

Edie came to, aware of something hard pressing against the left side of her head. It was the windowframe of a clanking, ramshackle bus. Groggily she opened her eyes. She’d fallen asleep when she’d vowed she wouldn’t!

‘Drink.’ Anatoli handed her a bottle of water. ‘You must drink. You are not used to this heat.’

Obediently she swallowed, making a face at the lukewarm water which tasted as if it had come out of a swimming pool. Her head throbbed. The windows were open all along the bus but the breeze that blew in was so sultry it barely cooled at all. She was damp with sweat between her legs, and shifted her position on the sticky seat, trying to straighten out her skirt. She had bought it for the trip, a soft cotton, in sky blue.

‘Bother!’ she smiled at Anatoli, gradually reviving. ‘I was determined not to fall asleep. I didn’t want to miss anything.’

But the heat and rocking rhythm of the bus had been too much for her. The last twenty-four hours had been exhausting, and different from any other she had experienced, and she was already very tired from all the sleepless nights at home worrying about coming to Israel in the first place. She was going to see David – that thought in itself was enough to keep her awake! But she also had to contend with his fierce young fiancée Gila, and all the other people with whom his life had become entwined. And she had to fly! She had kept herself awake with terrible visions of disaster – opening a wrong door and falling out of the aeroplane . . . Then the journey itself had been exhausting. Landing at Lydda airport to the hot, sulphurous smell of Israel. All the noise and clamour. Everyone here seemed to do everything at full volume – a cacophony of guttural voices, blaring horns of cars and buses as they were driven to a place where they could sleep for the night, along Tel Aviv’s busy streets, between pale blocks of buildings. All night there was a humming sound somewhere close, perhaps a generator, but it did not keep her awake. She woke refreshed, in the cool of the morning, to soft, coppery sunlight through the slats and the echo of sounds from the city outside.

On the bus journey she wanted to take in everything. As the sun moved higher in the sky, the land appeared harsher. How dry it was, she thought, seeing dust rising from the wheels of the truck in front. How inhospitable the earth looked where it was uncultivated, scattered with white, sharp stones between scrubby plants. Even the sheep and goats appeared wiry and dried up, like the plants, and the little black hens pecking by the roadside did not look as if they had much flesh on them. Then they would pass irrigated areas, where the land sprang into green fruitfulness: tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, and plantations of date and banana. She was astonished at the verdant growth, especially as they moved further north. And what a mixture of people! She stared fascinated at the women she saw, who reminded her of a page in a childhood encyclopedia of David’s entitled
Peoples of the World
. There were women working the fields in trousers like landgirls, the way David had descibed Gila. Others pushed prams wearing frocks and cardigans. Some women were dark-skinned, some fair. Some wore short skirts, others long colourful ones, and scarves covering dark hair, long black bedouin robes, shawls, and there were even, as Anatoli pointed out when they stopped in a place called Hadera, women in saris.

She had spent the first hour drinking in every detail, but gradually she had grown more and more drowsy.

They were coming into Tiberias. Hazy in the heat, Yam Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee as she knew it from the Bible, appeared in glimpses of deep blue between the buildings of the low, jumbled little town.

Anatoli reached for her hand, and they sat with their palms sweatily in each other’s.

‘Are you all right?’

Edie took a deep breath. ‘Terrified.’ She smiled nervously. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? But it’s been such a long time. I’m scared he’ll have changed so much that we shan’t have anything to say to each other.’

‘I don’t believe,’ Anatoli teased, ‘that I have ever known a time when you had nothing to say!’

His teasing exasperated her in her tense mood and he sensed her irritation.

‘Look—’ He squeezed her hand. ‘It will be all right. Really, my darling.’

‘I just feel . . .’ She sighed, trying to find a word to sum up her feelings of inadequacy, of fear in the face of all that David had found here. But it was fear of the unknown and she couldn’t put it into words.

The bus ground screeching to a halt, and abruptly everyone started getting up and trying to get out and there was a loud gabble of voices.

‘Well—’ Anatoli said, as if offering her something routine and everyday like a cup of tea. ‘Shall we go and find your son?’

David had told them he knew the times of the buses coming into Tiberias, and if all was going according to plan, he should be there somewhere, among the throng of people in the street.

Will I recognize him? Edie wondered, climbing down out of the bus. Her heart was beating painfully hard at the thought that she might soon see him, yet at the same time there was also a sense of unreality about it, as if her body had travelled on ahead and her mind still had to catch up. Was she really here, or would she soon wake up in her bed in Bournville?

Standing at the side of the road with their suitcase, they looked back and forth. Heat pressed down on them and the slight breeze just made her feel more damp. The bus took off again in a cloud of fumes. Two women, both middle-aged, stood beside them, arguing volubly about their bags. Motorcycles roared past on the road, one ridden by soldiers, a boy and girl, both in uniform, and Edie watched them go past, screwing up her eyes against the glare. The girl’s hair streamed out behind and she was laughing.

‘Perhaps we should find a spot in the shade,’ Anatoli suggested.

They were moving into the shade under the awning of a shop which had a pile of yellow melons outside, when they heard his voice.

‘Mom! Over here – Mom!’

Running towards them, dodging through the traffic, was a tall, deeply tanned, broad-shouldered man with a mop of curly brown hair. For a moment Edie couldn’t put together the familiar sound of his voice with the apparition she saw in front of her. She stood quite still as he ran over to them.

‘My goodness!’ she gasped. ‘Anatoli – it’s him. Oh Davey, look at you!’

Forgetting all her nervousness, she just flung her arms round him in her joy at seeing him, laughing, but with tears coming too. What a great big muscular man he was! In her arms he felt twice the size he’d been when she last saw him!

‘Hello, Mom.’ He sounded rather bashful, but he was grinning, and very pleased to see her.

Edie drew back and groped in her pocket for a hanky to wipe her eyes. ‘Oh I can’t believe how you’ve grown and filled out. Look at him, Anatoli! When he came he was a pale shrimp of a lad!’

‘Hello, David.’ Anatoli held out his hand.

‘I’m very pleased to meet you at last.’ Edie saw David examine Anatoli intently. ‘And congratulations to you both, again.’

He had brought one of the kibbutz cars to fetch them. Edie was further astonished. So he could drive now! And a man came up and asked him something she couldn’t understand, and David gave him fluent directions in Hebrew. She was so proud of him! He had learned and grown so much.

Edie sat beside him in the front of the car, with Anatoli behind. She watched David’s brown, muscular legs working the accelerator and clutch. He was wearing loose khaki shorts and sandals.

‘Gila was going to come with me,’ he said, backing the car to turn round. ‘Unfortunately she wasn’t feeling too well this morning, so she decided to rest and save her energy for later.’

‘How far on is she now?’ Edie asked hesitantly.

‘About three months. She’s been very well up until now – it’s a shame it happened today. Maybe she’s nervous because you’re coming!’

Not half as nervous as I am, Edie thought, wiping her moist hands on her hanky. It felt more humid here than it had in Tel Aviv. Sweat seemed to sit clammily on the skin. It was too bad about having to let her scar show in this heat. She had long ago taken off her cardigan. And it didn’t seem important any more.

She wanted to ask David everything at once. What have you said to Mrs Weissman, Gila’s mother? Do you get on with her? When are you going to get married? Where will Anatoli and I be staying? And above all, the thing David could not possibly answer – what will Gila think of me? But she stifled her questions and instead they commented on the view and David pointed things out.

‘That little building – you see the minaret back there – that’s the old mosque. Everyone has been here – Samaritans, Crusaders, Turks. And there was an earthquake in 1837, so a lot of it was lost.’

‘How far away is your kibbutz?’ Edie asked.

‘Oh, not far – three or four miles. It is one of the newer ones. Back that way—’ He pointed back south with his thumb. ‘At the bottom end of the lake, south of Kinneret, is Degania Aleph – that’s the oldest kibbutz in Israel, founded in 1909. Hamesh has barely been going for ten years, so it is still a little rough round the edges.’

They left the town, and to their right the water of the lake spread out in patches of deep blue and turquoise.

‘It’s very peaceful,’ she said. ‘And very beautiful.’

‘Yes,’ David said happily. ‘It’s wonderful. It’s very good for swimming and there are lovely fish.’