Never a Native by Alice Shalvi

Author:Alice Shalvi [Alice Shalvi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781905559978
Publisher: Halban
Published: 2018-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Pre-nuptial crises have been a staple trope in innumerable comedies. For those experiencing them, they are a nightmare of tension, misunderstanding and uncertainty so overwhelming that they come precariously close to causing a last-minute cancellation of the ceremony. Such was the nature of the 10 days that elapsed between Moshe’s arrival and our wedding. Looking now through the little grey Jewish National Fund diary for that fateful year, I note an incessant whirl of family encounters, dress fittings, parties at the homes of friends, clothes purchase, evenings at the theatre, at a concert or out for dinner. “Registry office – collect licence”, “Collect shoes”, “Menuhin: Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann”, “Moss Bros”, “Austin Reed”, “Collect wedding dress”, “Collect wedding hat”… The most portentous of all the events is heralded a scant week before the wedding: “M parents due 7.45”. Now close mutual scrutiny became inevitable. What would the two seemingly disparate parental couples find in common? If Moshe wasn’t the spouse my mother had hoped for, would I more easily approximate to the ideal that his parents had presumably envisioned?

Moshe’s parents were, like us, an odd couple, greatly differing from each other in temperament and behaviour. Sadie, American-born, was beautiful and quiet, gentle and unaffectedly gracious. “A real lady!” opined my snobbish English-born aunt (who never wholly resigned herself to having a Polish-born husband). Harry, who had arrived in the US from Minsk at an early age, was convivial, extrovert and loquacious – what Americans, using a term derived from the Yiddish, refer to as a kibitzer. By profession a travelling salesman specialising in men’s clothing, he was an experienced connoisseur of fashion and quality, a dapper dresser. At his insistence, Moshe reluctantly allowed himself to be led to London’s most elegant shops, acquiring a new wardrobe of suits, formal shirts, ties, shoes and even an impressive camel-hair overcoat, all of which contrasted sharply with the T-shirts, slacks and shorts he had sported throughout the summer in Jerusalem. He was ill at ease, embarrassed at being the cause of what he considered extensive and unwarranted expenditure. Unaccustomed to giving orders, he let my father or brother give prior instructions to the friendly chauffeur who drove the capacious Austin my parents now owned, and who entered wholeheartedly into the excitement and enthusiasm that Harry expressed as they drove around the West End from one exclusive establishment to another.

Since I was busy with my own chores, Moshe and I met only in the evenings, in the company of others. There was no privacy. The sole opportunity for the physical contact we both longed for was when we went en famille to dinner at Selby’s, a chic kosher restaurant that had recently opened, at which a three-piece band played dance music. No sooner had the music begun than we stepped on to the dance-floor to indulge in our customary amateurish mode of simply responding to the rhythms.

“No, no,” said Harry, who had in his youth supplemented his earnings by working as a dance instructor. “I’ll show you how to do it.

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