To Live in Peace by Rosemary Friedman Page B

Judaism which she had learned from her late father.
    “You can’t be obsessed with a Holy Land,” Patrick said, “to the extent of annexing great chunks of it and then expect to be respected as a Holy People. Rachel would like me to believe that the refugees simply don’t exist.”
    “Not at all, merely that they have not been ‘displaced’.”
    “If the Arabs feel themselves to be diplaced, Rache, then they’re displaced. You can’t tell an Arab you don’t really feel what you feel and I will define your feelings for you.”
    Old Mrs Klopman nodded.
    “To say that they’re not a group, with a separate national identity, is no different from Arafat saying that the Jews are nothing more than a religious sect with no rights to national self-determination.”
    “Telephone!” Herbert said, looking to the women at the table as he heard the bell.
    Rachael stood up and made for the hall.
    “You shouldn’t have let her go, Patrick,” Hettie said in deference to her daughter-in-law’s pregnancy.
    “It might be for me,” Carol said, “I left this number with the baby-sitter.”
    “God forbid!” Hettie said.
    “At least it’s a diversion,” old Mrs Klopman said.
    “It’s Alec!” Rachel called to Carol. “I think he’s in a disco.”
    “Will you excuse me?”
    Carol picked up the receiver in the hall. The telephone was mottled to look like marble and trimmed with ormolu.
    “Where are you?” she had to shout against the pop music that emanated from the instrument.
    “In the bar.” Alec was staying at the King’s Arms and Royal Hotel in Godalming. “How are the children?”
    “Fine. A bit cooped up in the flat. They keep squabbling. They miss the garden.”
    “Wait till they have the new one.”
    “How’s it going?”
    “They’ve found some wet rot which is holding things up a bit, and one of the steels we’d waited two weeks for was the wrong size. Are you getting the curtains organised your end?”
    “I can’t walk very far,” Carol said. “I get this pain…”
    “Don’t overdo it. We’ll manage without curtains.”
    “…and I’m still feeling sick.”
    “When are you seeing Morris Goldapple?”
    “On Friday.”
    “Don’t forget to tell him everything.”
    “I miss you.”
    “I miss you, too.”
    “We’re in the middle of dinner. And the West Bank. Rachel is doing her number…”
    “Give my love to everyone.”
    “What was that?” Carol said.
    “What?”
    “I thought I heard someone say something.”
    “There are people waiting for the phone.”
    “Love you,” Carol said.
    “Love you, too.”
    In Hettie’s dining-room the plates had been cleared away and a pavlova the size of a cartwheel, groaning with raspberries and kiwi fruit, had been set on the table.
    “Pavlova was Jewish,” Herbert said to no one in particular.
    “Alec sends his love,” Carol reported.
    “Sounded as if he was having a rave up.”
    “He was in the bar.”
    “When the cat’s away…”
    “Shut up Rachel,” Patrick said.
    “Did you hear the one about two acquaintances who run into each other in a bar after an absence of many years?” Herbert said. “They have a few drinks together then one of them gets up and says to his friend: ‘I don’t like you, I can’t stand you, and what’s more I don’t want anything to do with you.’ ‘What’s the matter?’ the other one says. ‘What have I done?’ ‘I think you’re unpleasant, you’re overbearing, I don’t like your political views, and above all I think you’re pretentious.’ The second man looks at his friend in amazement. ‘Who on earth are you talking about,’ he says. ‘Moi?’”

Ten
    Kitty was not sure exactly when it was she realised that the shawl she was knitting for Rachel, the first stitches of which had been cast on over the Atlantic, had stopped growing. At home in the evenings, since Sydney had died, there had been little to do – while she watched the television – but knit. In the past year alone