Bells of Bournville Green (42 page)

‘Hark—’ Edie held her hand up. ‘What’s that?’

They both rushed to the front door. David and Gila came in out of the cold. As they came through the door he automatically put his hand on her shoulder to guide her and Greta saw her shake him off violently. Gila had clearly been weeping and seemed completely overwrought. Not saying a word to anyone, of either explanation or apology, she tore up the stairs.

‘Right,’ Edie said. ‘That’s quite enough of all this. I’m telephoning Martin Ferris – now.’

Chapter Fifty-Eight

It was comforting to hear Dr Ferris’s car braking in front of the house. His tall, lean figure gave off such a sense of calm and reliability.

‘She’s going to be so angry,’ David was saying agitatedly as he led Martin Ferris into the living room. He was beside himself with worry. ‘She doesn’t trust anyone, even if I say it’s a friend.’

‘Well, it’s got past anything we can deal with, love,’ Edie said.

Martin Ferris took off his hat and coat and laid them on the arm of the sofa. ‘You think she’s awake?’

‘We’ve heard her moving about,’ Edie said. ‘This is ever so good of you, Martin. I’m so sorry – Christmas and everything.’

‘Not at all. You say she ran off?’

‘She went to the station at Selly Oak,’ David explained. ‘For some reason she thought it would make sense to follow the railway line into town. Luckily it’s quiet, of course. She got as far as the university and she was scared, I think, and came up on to the road again, so I caught up with her eventually.’

‘Good Lord. I’d better go up and take a look. Will you warn her I’m here?’

‘I’ll come up,’ Edie said.

Greta found herself alone with David.

‘Oh God,’ he said wretchedly, turning to face the fire. ‘She’ll never forgive me for this.’ He stood leaning on the mantelshelf, looking down into the glowing coals. After a silence, he said, ‘How can you be so close to someone, love them so much, then be so utterly far away as if they’re a stranger?’

‘I don’t know,’ Greta said helplessly. ‘I’ve never had much luck with any of it really.’

David turned to her, managing a faint smile for a moment. ‘Well, that’s honest, anyway.’ Distractedly he looked up at the ceiling. ‘Dr Ferris is such a good man. I hope she can see that.’

Edie came back looking solemn. ‘Well, he’s in with her. She didn’t want to see him, but as he was standing there she didn’t have a lot of choice. I told her he’s a family doctor, nothing else.’

There was nothing for it but more waiting. The clock gave a faint chime on the quarter hour, half past two, a quarter to three. After half an hour, Martin Ferris came down. David sprang to his feet.

‘It’s all right,’ Martin held his hand up. ‘I’ve sedated her, with her permission, of course. She’ll sleep now. I know it’s ridiculously late, but can we talk for a few moments?’

‘I’ll make more tea,’ Edie said, and Greta made as if to help.

‘It’s all right, you stay there, love.’

There didn’t seem to be any question of anyone going to bed. They were all far too keyed up. Greta sat quietly as the men talked.

‘I just want to get a few things straight in my mind.’ Martin Ferris sat down on the other side of the fireplace, facing David. Greta was always struck by the length of his limbs, the boniness of his face, which was fascinating rather than handsome.

‘My first thought when I saw her was that she could do with a spell in hospital: somewhere like Hollymoor . . .’

David started to shake his head, looking aghast.

‘I know she has a horror of anywhere psychiatric. But you do realize she’s in rather a bad way, don’t you? I mean I should expect both of you to be, after all that’s happened.’

Martin gave David a long, penetrating look. Greta remembered Janet and Edie’s conversations about their men, the nightmares, all they had seen in wartime haunting them. Martin knew exactly what he was talking about.

‘Tell me—’ He leaned back the chair. ‘It would help to know a bit more about your wife’s background: mother, father, past events. The family moved to Israel – from where?’

‘Germany,’ David said. ‘Düsseldorf.’

‘Ah,’ Martin Ferris said meaningfully. ‘Does that mean . . . ?’

‘Oh, no!’ David corrected him. ‘They came before the war. No – they hadn’t been through any of the camps or anything. They made
aliyah
in 1933, went to live in Tel Aviv when her mother was about seventeen. The father was an architect, Bauhaus trained. They could see what was beginning to happen under Hitler and they had thought of emigrating anyway. Gila’s mother got married – to an engineer – just as the war broke out, and had Gila within the year. Her husband was killed two years later, working on a site in Haifa. A building collapsed. Gila’s mother was left alone with her, of course. She decided she’d like to be part of kibbutz life so she went to Hamesh – the kibbutz where we met – just after it started in 1950. Gila grew up there. Her mother is not the easiest of women. She has bouts of depression, paranoia at times, but I think her troubles had already started before.’ He told Martin about the depression, the spell in the asylum in Düsseldorf.

Martin nodded. ‘So there’s an unstable mother . . . Any signs before this, would you say?’

David hesitated. He thought of the night he had come home from Sinai, of other times when her emotions had to him seemed overwrought. He had put his reactions down to his Englishness, his maleness. Gila had always had a fiery temperament. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’

‘And then this double blow – the bombs, your son . . .’

‘She was pregnant at the time. We lost that child as well.’

David spoke abruptly and pain flickered in his face. The conversation put Martin Ferris in the role of a father confessor, and it was stirring up David’s emotions, as if he would have liked to let go and weep.

‘Yes, I know,’ Martin said gently. He sat quietly for a moment, obviously thinking.

’She seems very clear that she wants to go home.’

‘She hates it here. I thought it would give us a chance to get away from it all, to see things afresh . . .’

‘But instead it has been just one more shock, another disorientating change?’

As he spoke Edie came in with a tray of tea and started to hand the cups round.

‘Yes,’ David said. ‘I can see now that it’s been too much for her. Now it feels as if she is like an animal in a trap, trying to escape.’

‘And you?’ Martin stirred his tea. ‘How has it been for you?’

David looked down and Greta could see him fighting his emotion again.

‘Important,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ He looked up suddenly, almost defiantly. ‘I can’t go back there.’ He gave a small shudder. ‘No – it’s tainted now – all of it.’

Martin gave him a long sad look.

‘You know you’ll have to let her go?’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s psychiatric treatment she needs. She needs lots of time to grieve in a place where she feels at home. And Israel is her home . . .’

The words ‘even if it can’t be yours’, and all that implied, were left unspoken.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

No one tried to talk Gila out of going home. It was obvious that there was no point, and the fact that Martin, a doctor, said she ought to go convinced all of them that it was the right thing for her health.

It was only David who really knew that the marriage was over, yet he even tried at first to convince himself that things could get better.

‘You’ll see,’ Edie said. ‘When she’s gone back and had more time to recover, you can go and join her again, love, perhaps start again – have another baby . . .’

Once she knew she was going back to Israel, Gila was a little calmer, and they saw glimpses of the sweet-natured woman she could be when well and happy. But she was very distant from them and showed no signs of affection to David or sense that he was her husband and part of her future – or even of her past. It was as if she had cut the past off completely, could not bear anything to do with it, and all she could think of was getting on the next plane to Tel Aviv.

The day she left, when David was to travel to London with her, Greta saw Gila for the last time, in the hall as Greta was putting on her coat and scarf to go to work.

‘I hope you have a good journey,’ she said, speaking slowly and clearly. She had never got to know Gila at all, and could not think of anything else to say, except, ‘It has been very nice to meet you.’

Gila reached out a bony hand and said mechanically, ‘Thank you. It was nice to meet you also.’

And she walked off towards the kitchen. Greta watched the heartbroken, scrawny woman moving away from her and felt such pity for her, but she felt so sad for David as well. The picture of them when they were first married, which Edie kept propped on the mantelpiece, showed them looking so happy and hopeful together.

They were on her mind all day at work, the sadness of it weighing her down. She imagined David waving goodbye to Gila at Heathrow airport, how awful it must be. Her mind was with him every step of the way, as if she wanted to hold his hand and give comfort.

‘Wakey, wakey – I’m talking to you!’ a voice said close to her ear, and she jumped. One of the other women was standing beside her, grinning. ‘That’s the third time I’ve said it. Must be love!’

‘Oh no – it isn’t that,’ Greta snapped. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

But the woman’s words burned in her. How stupid
she
was! Was that it, the way David brought her alive every time they were in the room together, the way her mind flew to him constantly and she lay awake thinking of him, longing for him, the way he had become the most important person in her life apart from Francesca, even more important, she realized with a shock, than Anatoli? Was this how it was: the way her heart reached out for him, the feeling that she would do anything for him to make him happier? Could that be it – she was in love with David? David, who would never look at her because she was not good enough for him, David, who was married, and confused and heartbroken?

The hopelessness of her feelings made her angry and wretched all day. How could she have been so stupid as to fall in love with David of all people? Who did she think she was, a factory hand having stupid dreams about him when he was a doctor?

When she left that day, walking out towards the men’s grounds, she met John Foreman. She had a feeling he had been waiting for her but she wasn’t sure. But John was not one to pretend.

‘Hello!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I was hoping I’d meet you. Came this way specially.’

He was a tall lad, about her age, she guessed, with thick, wavy blond hair and blue eyes.

‘Oh, hello, John,’ she said. Seeing him did cheer her up a fraction, and she liked his straightforward friendliness towards her.

‘You off home?’ he said, walking beside her.

‘Yes – done for the day.’

‘Only I was wondering if you’d come out one night – for a drink or to the flicks or summat. Or you could come and hear us play if you like.’ John was in a band called the Banana Boys, one of the many hopefuls playing in pubs all over Birmingham.

Greta hesitated for a second. She didn’t really want to go at all. She should be at home with Francesca and Anatoli, with . . . No, not with David. A surge of determination passed through her. She managed to smile at John.

‘Thanks. That’d be nice. When were you thinking of?’

John’s face broke into a delighted grin. ‘You serious? I thought you’d turn me down! Well how about tomorrow? We’re playing over at the Greyhound.’

They arranged a place to meet and John said, ‘That’s great – I’ll look forward to it! See ya tomorrow, Greta!’

He almost skipped away and his enthusiasm made her smile for a moment. Above all though she felt she’d done something right, and she felt lighter for it. She had to get David out of her mind and this seemed a way to do it. John seemed a nice enough bloke, a bit of a laugh. And these days a laugh was certainly something she could do with.

She walked into the house smiling and heard Francesca call ‘Mamma!’ as she opened the door and saw her come toddling out to greet her.

Edie followed her, smiling bravely, but Greta could see the tension in her.

‘Did they get off all right?’ she asked, scooping Francesca into her arms.

‘Yes. She should be on the plane by now. I expect David’ll be making his way back.’

Greta didn’t hear David arrive home because she was with Anatoli. The days when he got up were becoming fewer now. They were keeping the pain at bay with morphine. She tried to spend time with him every day, reading to him or talking as he lay propped on his pillows. He was always pleased to see her and she treasured every moment as he grew thinner and more sick.

‘Hello, my dear,’ he greeted her. ‘You’re looking very cheerful today.’

She could see that this pleased him. There had been a lot of sadness in the house.

‘Ah well.’ She put down the tray of tea she had made and settled on the chair by his bed. ‘I got asked out on a date!’

‘Aha!’ Anatoli said, with great interest. ‘And who is the young prince who has dared to request such a thing?’

Greta laughed. ‘His name’s John – he works in the Chocolate Block. Seems nice enough – I don’t know him yet, really. He plays the guitar in a band.’

‘Hmm –
nice enough?’
He teased. ‘I’m not sure that’s good enough for you my dear. Whoever goes out with you needs to be very special.’

‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we? P’raps he will be special. Now here’s your tea – and would you like another chapter?’

‘Ah yes – we had reached the crucial moment, hadn’t we? I have been trying to puzzle it out, but he has defeated me, as ever.’

She set off reading another chapter of their latest Maigret mystery. Greta was enjoying the story herself and Anatoli usually listened with great attention, trying to guess what would happen next. At the end she put the bookmark back in, closed the book and looked up at him, smiling.

But instead of looking back at her with his usual twinkling expression, Anatoli’s head was lolling to one side on the pillow and his eyes were closed. Greta froze. She stopped breathing in those seconds. He looked . . . Surely he couldn’t be . . . ? His face was so sunken and lacking expression! Heart pounding, she got to her feet, groping for his pulse. Then she heard him breathing, and her own breath flowed again. He had fallen asleep, that was all!