To Live in Peace Read Free

his past, and Kitty found the sympathetic ear and practical solutions she had lacked, since Sydney’s death, for the daily problems which beset her. She should, she told herself on flight BA175 to New York, have left it at that.
    It was the excitement, she thought, of seeing Rachel off on her honeymoon that had led her to accede to Maurice’s suggestion that she come to live with him in New York. He had two adjoining apartments and he had offered to move his painting into his living quarters, leaving the studio for Kitty. A more permanent relationship had not been discussed. The decision had something to do with her own flat, which seemed so empty when she came home after the wedding, although it was a long time since Rachel had lived there; something to do with her sister-in -law Beatty, whose husband, Leon, had died in hospital while Beatty was at the wedding and for whom Kitty now felt herself responsible; something to do with Frieda, her other sister-in-law, and her husband, Harry, who were always ringing her up for one bit of advice or another; and Mirrie, Sydney’s younger sister, who was demonstrating signs of senility; and her nephew Norman, who by the look of things would be getting married soon to the South African Sandra and would no longer be dining with her twice a week; something to do with Carol, who was coming to stay for three months and would be bringing the children and chaos into Kitty’s ordered life while the house in Godalming received its face-lift; something to do with her son, Josh, and his wife, Sarah, who was also expecting a baby and, under Kitty’s guidance, hoping to become a convert to Judaism before the child was born.
    Maurice, how romantic he was – Sydney, loving and caring had never been romantic – had tied a knot in thefronds of the flowers he had sent her when he came to England for the wedding, the Bedouin way of saying: I love you. “Later on, is coming by his very dear one. If she does nothing, she is turning him down. If she opens up the knot…” Kitty had opened up the knot.
    The family, horrified, had tried to dissuade her.
    “A lot of silly nonsense,” Beatty had said, snivelling into her handkerchief when she got up from her week of mourning. She had visualised a new life for herself in which she would see more of her sister-in-law, Kitty, chumming up – although they had never been close – two widows, for shopping expeditions, and holidays in Bournemouth or Majorca. “Who do you know in New York?” she said.
    Her younger sister-in-law had been more honest. “What will I do without you?” Mirrie said. Mirrie had given up work now; sometimes she was unable to remember what day it was, or if she had turned off the gas. Kitty commended her to Beatty who would have time on her hands (although the two sisters had always been at each other’s throats) and to her brother, Juda, who had never been bothered with her but was now the head of the family. Juda had offered to have Maurice “investigated” but Kitty, less than politely (she couldn’t think where she had got her unaccustomed courage from) told him to mind his own business. Carol was put out (“I thought you’d be looking after the children while I had the baby”), and Rachel furious: “That old man!” “You hardly spoke to him,” Kitty pointed out.
    The women of the Ladies’ Guild were dumbstruck. She heard them whispering among themselves and felt that they regarded her with new eyes in which there was an element of jealousy, as if she had metamorphosed suddenly into an amalgam of Elizabeth Taylor and SophiaLoren. They treated her gently, like an invalid. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Kitty dear?”
    Of course she did not know. But with the advent of Maurice, a new dimension had come into her life which enabled her, uncharacteristically and late, to step forth into the unknown, to take a chance, to try.
    She had waited until Rachel came back from her honeymoon, golden and bursting