Howard Jacobson - J

i

July 8, 201-

Darling Mummy and Daddy,

It was so lovely to be with you last weekend. I am only sorry that you didn’t feel the same way about seeing me. I didn’t, and don’t ever, mean to cause you vexation. What I said came from my heart. And you have always encouraged me to follow my heart. You will say that the opinions of others, especially Fridleif, have made that heart no longer mine, but believe me — that is not true. My decision to take up a secretarial appointment at the Congregational Federation of the Islands is mine alone. It is a purely administrative post and therefore purely secular. I have not left you. Of course I have been influenced by people I have met up here. Isn’t that bound to be the effect of an education? Isn’t that precisely what an education is for? You, Mummy, said you should never have let me leave home — ‘wandering to the furthest ends of the earth like some gypsy’, as you chose to put it, though I haven’t left the country and am no more than four hours away, even at the speed you drive — but what’s happened isn’t your fault just as it wouldn’t have been your fault had I gone to New Guinea and become a headhunter. I just wish you could consider what I’m doing as a tribute to the open-minded spirit in which you brought me up. My thinking is a continuation of yours, that’s all. And I am still your daughter wherever I live and whoever I work with.

Your ever loving

Rebecca

THIS WAS THE first of a small bundle of letters Ailinn’s companion gave her to peruse. ‘Don’t for the moment ask me how I came by them,’ she said, ‘just read them.’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’

The second letter was dated four months later.

November 12, 201 -

Dearest Mummy and Daddy,

Up until the final minute I hoped you would turn up. Fridleif had tried to warn me against disappointment — not in a hostile way, I assure you, but quite the opposite. (You would love him if you would only give yourself the chance.) ‘You must understand how hard it must be for them,’ he said. But I hoped against hope nonetheless. Even as we exchanged our vows I still expected to see you materialise at the church door and come walking down the aisle.

There, it’s said. The church door.

How did that ever get to be such a terrible word in our family? What did the church ever do to us? Yes, yes, I know, but that was like a thousand years ago. Is there nothing we can’t forgive? Is there nothing we can’t forget?

Try saying it to each other when you go to bed at night. Church, church, church. . You’ll be surprised how easy it gets. Do you remember the finger rhyme we used to play together? ‘Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple, open the door and see all the people!’ The word seemed innocent enough then. No one sent a thunderbolt out of the sky to punish us for saying it.

But if it can’t be innocent to you now I’m a big girl couldn’t you at least learn to hate it a little less for my sake?

Open the door and see all the people!

Let’s get it all over and done with, anyway. I married the man I love in a church. In the presence of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit we exchanged vows. And I am now Mrs Macshuibhne, the wife of the Reverend Fridleif Macshuibhne. A bit of a mouthful, I agree, but you’d get used to it if you only tried.

Please be happy for me, at least.

Rebecca

‘How did you come by this?’ Ailinn wanted to know.

‘We agreed you wouldn’t ask.’

‘No, you agreed I wouldn’t ask.’

‘Just go on reading.’

March 24, 201-

Dear Mummy and Daddy,

Still no word from you. Must I accept that you have abandoned me?

What have I done that is so terrible? What shame have I brought on you?

I accept that there was a time when we needed to show solidarity with one another. We were depleted and demoralised. I knew that. Every defection was interpreted as a sign of weakness and exploited — how could I not know that given the number of times I heard it. If they don’t even love one another, people said — or we feared people would say, which isn’t quite the same thing — why should we love them. But that was a long time ago. No one is trying to exploit us any more. No one even notices us. We are accepted now. We have never been more safe. I know what you will say. You will say what you always said. ‘Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Remember the Allegory of the Frog.’ * Daddy, if I remembered the Allegory of the Frog I would never stay anywhere for five minutes at a time. If I remembered the Allegory of the Frog I would never know a moment’s peace. And the water isn’t hot here any more. It isn’t even lukewarm. Yes, I know you’ve heard that before. I know it was what our grandparents said the last time. ‘Here? Don’t make us laugh. Anywhere but here.’ Until the eleventh hour, until eleven seconds before the eleventh minute before the clocks stopped for us, as you’ve told me a thousand times, they ignored the warning signs, laughed at those who told them it was now or never, refused what stared them in the face. Here? Not here! ‘And you know their fate, Becky.’ Yes, Daddy, I know their fate, and I owe it to the memory of all those who suffered that fate — whom you speak of as though they were family though none of our family perished, I remind you — never to forget it. But that was then and now is now. And that was there and here is here. You used to laugh at me when I came home from university — ‘Here she is, our daughter, life president of the It Couldn’t Happen Here Society.’ And I called you, Daddy, ‘honorary chair of the Never Again League’. Well, I don’t disrespect you for believing what you believe. It is right to worry. But you cannot compare like with unlike. If you could only see how I am treated up here. The kindness! The consideration!

The things you fear are all inside your own heads. And I sometimes think such fears make life not worth living. Is it a life to be in terror every day? To start whenever anyone knocks at the door? To recoil in shock from every thoughtless insult? If those are the conditions on which we hold our freedom to be ourselves, marry, bring up our children, worship, then it is no freedom at all. You cannot live a life forever waiting for it to end.

And it is such a waste when we could be so happy. Heaven knows we were happy as a family for so long. If I was with you now we would be happy again. But I can’t be with you again without you accepting Fridleif. And what possible reason do you have not to accept him? He is not the Devil. He is not the end of us. Can’t we stop all this sectarianism and just live in peace? All you are doing by rejecting me is making what you dread come true.

Your ever loving daughter,

Becky

PS You are also about to be grandparents.

‘This is not going to end well,’ Ailinn said.

‘Just read.’

September 17, 201-

Dearest Mummy and Daddy,

I will not upset you by sending you a photograph of your grandchild. I accept now, with great sorrow, that there will be no peace between us. But I do owe it to you — and to myself — to explain why I have done what I have done one last time.

Your generation is not my generation. I say that with the deepest respect. I never was and am not now a rebellious child. I understand why you think as you do. But the ship has sailed. My generation refuses to jump at every murmur of imagined hostility. We love our lives. We love this country. We relish being here. And to go on relishing being here we don’t have to be as we were before. That’s why I have decided to convert. Not as a rejection of the way you brought me up but as a step forward from it. We were always a preparatory people, Fridleif says. And we have done what we were put on earth to do. We have completed our mission and shown the way. We stood out against every manner of oppression, and having conquered it there is no need for all the morbid remembering and re-remembering. I don’t say we should forget, I say we have been given the chance to progress and we should take it. It’s time to live for the future, not the past. It’s time to be a people that looks forward not back.