Jeffrey Archer - A Twist in the Tale

When I walked back onto the track only the ground staff were still around. I took one last look at the finishing line before I strolled over to the Forsyth Library. I felt unable to face the usual team get-together at Joe’s, so I tried to settle down to write an essay on the property rights of married women.

The library was almost empty that Saturday evening and I was well into my third page when I heard a voice say, ‘I hope I’m not interrupting you but you didn’t come to Joe’s.’ I looked up to see Christina standing on the other side of the table. Father, I didn’t know what to say. I just stared up at the beautiful creature in her fashionable blue miniskirt and tight-fitting sweater that emphasized the most perfect breasts, and said nothing.

‘I was the one who shouted “Jew boy” when you were still at high school. I’ve felt ashamed about it ever since. I wanted to apologize to you on the night of the prom dance but couldn’t summon up the courage with Greg standing there.’ I nodded my understanding — I couldn’t think of any words that seemed appropriate. ‘I never spoke to him again,’ she said. ‘But I don’t suppose you even remember Greg.’

‘Care for coffee?’ I asked, trying to sound as if I wouldn’t mind if she replied, ‘I’m sorry, I must get back to Bob.’

‘I’d like that very much,’ she said.

I took her to the library coffee shop, which was about all I could afford at the time. She never bothered to explain what had happened to Bob Richards, and I never asked.

Christina seemed to know so much about me that I felt embarrassed. She asked me to forgive her for what she had shouted on the track that day two years before. She made no excuses, placed the blame on no one else, just asked to be forgiven.

Christina told me she was hoping to join me at McGill in September, to major in German. ‘Bit of a cheek,’ she admitted, ‘as it is my native tongue.’

We spent the rest of that summer in each other’s company. We saw St. Joan again, and even queued for a film called Dr. No that was all the craze at the time. We worked together, we ate together, we played together, but we slept alone.

I said little about Christina to you at the time, but I’d bet you knew already how much I loved her, I could never hide anything from you. And after all your teaching of forgiveness and understanding you could hardly disapprove.

The rabbi paused. His heart ached because he knew so much of what was still to come although he could not have foretold what would happen in the end. He had never thought he would live to regret his Orthodox upbringing but when Mrs. Goldblatz first told him about Christina he had been unable to mask his disapproval. It will pass, given time, he told her. So much for wisdom.

Whenever I went to Christina’s home I was always treated with courtesy but her family were unable to hide their disapproval. They uttered words they didn’t believe in an attempt to show that they were not anti-Semitic, and whenever I brought up the subject with Christina she told me I was overreacting. We both knew I wasn’t.

They quite simply thought I was unworthy of their daughter. They were right, but it had nothing to do with my being Jewish.

I shall never forget the first time we made love. It was the day that Christina learned she had won a place at McGill.

We had gone to my room at three o’clock to change for a game of tennis. I took her in my arms for what I thought would be a brief moment and we didn’t part until the next morning. Nothing had been planned. But how could it have been, when it was the first time for both of us?

I told her I would marry her — don’t all men the first time? — only I meant it.

Then a few weeks later she missed her period. I begged her not to panic, and we both waited for another month because she was fearful of going to see any doctor in Montreal.

If I had told you everything then, Father, perhaps my life would have taken a different course. But I didn’t, and have only myself to blame.

I began to plan for a marriage that neither Christina’s family nor you could possibly have found acceptable, but we didn’t care. Love knows no parents, and certainly no religion. When she missed her second period I agreed Christina should tell her mother. I asked her if she would like me to he with her at the time, but she simply shook her head, and explained that she felt she had to face them on her own.

‘I’ll wait here until you return,’ I promised.

She smiled. ‘I’ll be back even before you’ve had the time to change your mind about marrying me.’

I sat in my room at McGill all that afternoon reading and pacing — mostly pacing — but she never came back, and I didn’t go in search of her until it was dark. I crept round to her home, all the while trying to convince myself there must be some simple explanation as to why she hadn’t returned.

When I reached her road I could see a light on in her bedroom but nowhere else in the house so I thought she must be alone. I marched through the gate and up to the front porch, knocked on the door and waited.

Her father answered the door.

‘What do you want?’ he asked, his eyes never leaving me for a moment.

‘I love your daughter,’ I told him, ‘and I want to marry her.’

‘She will never marry a Jew,’ he said simply and closed the door. I remember that he didn’t slam it, be just closed it, which made it somehow even worse.

I stood outside in the road staring up at her room for over an hour until the light went out. Then I walked home. I recall there was a light drizzle that night and few people were on the streets. I tried to work out what I should do next, although the situation seemed hopeless to me. I went to bed that night hoping for a miracle. I had forgotten that miracles are for Christians, not for Jews.

By the next morning I had worked out a plan: I phoned Christina’s home at eight and nearly put the phone down when I heard the voice at the other end.

‘Mrs. von Braumer,’ she said.

‘Is Christina there?’ I asked in a whisper.

‘No, she’s not,’ came back the controlled impersonal reply.

‘When are you expecting her back?’ I said.

‘Not for some time,’ she said, and then the phone went dead.

‘Not for some time’ turned out to be over a year. I wrote, telephoned, asked friends from school and university but could never find out where they had taken her.

Then one day, unannounced, she returned to Montreal accompanied by a husband and my child. I learned the bitter details from that font of all knowledge, Naomi Goldblatz, who had already seen all three of them.

I received a short note from Christina about a week later begging me not to make any attempt to contact her.

I had just begun my last year at McGill and like some eighteenth-century gentleman I honored her wish to the letter and turned all my energies to the final exams. She still continued to preoccupy my thoughts and I considered myself lucky at the end of the year to be offered a place at Harvard Law School.

I left Montreal for Boston on September 12, 1968.

You must have wondered why I never came home once during those years. I knew of your disapproval Thanks to Mrs. Goldblatz everyone was aware who the father of Christina’s child was and I felt an enforced absence might make life a little easier for you.

The rabbi paused as he remembered Mrs. Goldblatz letting him know what she had considered was ‘only her duty.’