To Live in Peace Read Online Free PDF Page B

as hard to consider one’s parents in the light of physical desirability as it was to imagine oneself growing old.
    “You don’t love him.”
    Kitty said nothing.
    “Do you?”
    “I don’t know,” Kitty said. “I’m extremely fond of him.” She thought of Maurice and his letters which had challenged so many of her previously held convictions. “He has opened up new worlds.”
    “If he loves you so much why doesn’t he come over here?” Rachel said. “He strikes me as extremely egotistic!”
    “There has to be a break,” Kitty said. “I’m contemplating a new life not simply a continuation of the old.”
    “I suppose he doesn’t realise that you may be needed here. That you have three new grandchildren on the way. That Carol’s expecting you to look after Debbie and Lisa and Mathew, that Sarah relies on you. He’s encouraging you to be selfish.”
    “To live my own life.”
    “For his ends. You’ll be absolutely miserable all on your own in New York.”
    “Have I been so happy here without your father?”
    “We’ve all done our best…”
    “I’m not complaining.”
    “I’m only thinking of your own good.”
    A phrase from the past came into Kitty’s head: “Paternalism is the worst form of tyranny.” Rachel had used it to her father on more than one occasion.
    “I appreciate your concern,” she said.
    There had been no moving her. Rachel, unaware of the trepidation with which Kitty regarded the whole affair, had been amazed at both her mother’s apparent firmness of purpose and her own reaction to Kitty’s decision, from the consequences of which she felt she must protect her. Maurice Morgenthau, from what Kitty had told her, seemed a poor candidate, as far as his religiousaffiliations were concerned, for her late father’s shoes. If his anchoretic state were to be believed there would be no loving family to replace Kitty’s own waiting for her in New York. Rachel did not acknowledge that the rationalisations with which she so vehemently opposed Kitty’s plans might be camouflaging her own unconscious wish that, when the child she carried was born, she wanted her mother to be there.
    The fact that both her sister Carol and her sister- in-law Sarah were also pregnant, and that their children were all expected within a short time of each other, did not impress her. Rachel’s world, to her astonishment, had become circumscribed by the unique fruit of her own womb. The embryo, inconsiderately, had materialised four months before their wedding, when she and Patrick had been planning their trip around the world. There was never any question of which should be sacrificed. Deprived of her preoccupations with the travelling plans – they were to have gone overland to India and thence to Australia (where Patrick had a cousin), Africa and Brazil – Rachel’s horizons had become bounded by her own physiology, which was playing such extraordinary and wondrous tricks, and that of her baby.
    There was no book on ante-or postnatal care she had not read, no theory she had not examined on the emotional, marital, sexual and social aspects of pregnancy. In the interests of her child’s future health and the ideal structure of his bone formation – which would determine his physical beauty – she regulated her diet (eschewing everything but wholefoods and health foods) and resorted, only when necessary, to homeopathic medicines. Her anthropological research had revealed that the majority of peoples gave birth in some kind of upright position, most commonly kneeling, squatting or sitting, and were encouraged to move aroundduring labour. There was to be no private consultant, such as Morris Goldapple who had delivered Carol’s three children (flat on her back in the “stranded beetle” position) orchestrating her confinement and intervening medically for his own convenience; no home delivery, such as Sarah had opted for, traditional in her family which considered hospital a good place to be only