Chapter 10

“Jacob, as and when you marry Leah, you will become the head of YOUR family, so you might as well get in some practice!”

The teenage Jewish boy absorbed this advice, then in a serious voice said, “Very well, sir.” After a moment’s hesitation, he recited in Hebrew what he could remember his father saying over the table, blessing each type of food. He had heard it so often the words were engraved on his soul. Leah was most impressed as she watched her partner concentrating on the Hebrew words, and all the rest of the household were also affected by his intensity. When he finished, he turned and hugged Leah, tears in his eyes. She hugged him back.

They then all set to and enjoyed the meal. It was the first full meal the youngsters had been able to partake of since they left home, and they were hungry. They swiftly cleared their plates, and were just as swiftly offered seconds.

As the meal came to an end, Jessica raised her eyebrows to Reg in query, and he nodded approval. She spoke to the young people, like an instructor passing on essentials.

“Jacob and Leah, we would like to speak to your parents in support of your being together, but we need your approval before we start. Would you allow us to do so? We will keep your whereabouts secret for the moment.”

Jacob looked to Leah for her input. She nodded to him, and patted the back of his hand in support. He replied to Jessica, “We are willing for you to act as our intermediaries, but please make it clear that we are now together and intend to remain together for ever.” He had a look of determination about him, and Jessica accepted this.

“We are working on that basis, Jacob. We have seen how much you care for each other. We would like the chance to show your parents the same thing.”

She looked over to Maryam. “Shall we start with the boy’s parents, Maryam?”

“I agree, Jessica. If we can get them on board, the others should be easier.”

Jessica motioned to Jacob. “We need your parents’ full names and their address, Jacob, as well as the phone number. Can you come with us, in case they need to hear your voice?”

She and Maryam went off with him to phone his father and mother, if they were at home.

They were. Jessica was direct to the point.

“Mr. Levin? I am speaking for your son, Jacob. As I am a responsible adult, he wishes me to act on his behalf. Are you willing to listen?”

“Listen? I’ll tell you what I want to hear: I want to hear my son’s voice, so I know you have not kidnapped him!”

“Oh. I am sorry: I had not considered that you might think that! Very well. Jacob, please speak to your father.”

She handed over the phone, and he said, “Dad? I am not kidnapped. I ran away with Leah. I am with Leah, and I intend her to become my wife. Please listen to this lady.”

He handed the phone back, and Jessica said, “Are you satisfied now, sir? I am purely an arbitrator on Jacob’s behalf. He does not want a father-son argument, but a genuine adult discussion. I am a married woman with a teenage daughter of my own, so I can understand your feelings. My daughter ran away from home, but for different reasons. It means that I can speak from experience.”

Mr Levin sounded more subdued. “In that case, I will listen to you, Mrs... ?”

“My name will remain unspoken for now, Mr Levin. It is not relevant to our discussion. I will tell you that I am not Jewish. I am a Christian, but again, religion should not be a factor. The topic is your son and the girl that he loves. Do you wish to object to his love?”

“How do you mean? I never object to love, but I can object to people I disapprove of.”

“Really? What kind of people would you disapprove of, Mr Levin? Everyone who disagrees with you?”

Jessica looked towards Jacob and put her forefinger to her lips to tell him to be silent. He scowled, but dipped his head in agreement.

Mr Levin replied, “I have no specific objections, but I would like him to marry a nice Jewish girl.”

“So he can marry a nice Jewish girl, no matter whether she is white, brown, yellow or black?”

He stopped to think, then asked, “Why do you ask that, madam?”

“I want to discover whether your idea of love extends beyond tradition. Would you still love your wife if she was black, for instance?”

“I love my wife, so her colour matters not to me.”

“What about her religion? Would you still love her if she was not Jewish?”

“I would love her, no matter what, madam! What has this got to do with my son?”

“Nothing directly. I am establishing your boundaries for love. Your son has to establish his own boundaries, has he not?”

“He has. Are you trying to tell me something?”

“The only thing I would like you to bring to mind is Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18. Do you know that verse? Your son has chosen a girl in his school class as his life mate. She is a lovely girl, equally in love with Jacob, but she is Christian and black. In case I need to remind you, that verse from Leviticus says: ‘You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.’

I want you to think about that before you say anything more. I will ring you back after speaking to the other family.”

She closed the call, and handed the phone to Maryam.

“Your turn, Maryam. You won’t need a specific verse, as the new Testament is full of sayings about love.”

Maryam took the phone with a grin, and then smiled at Jacob.

“As your father was thinking you might have been kidnapped, I think you should fetch Leah for answering such an accusation, Jacob.”

He looked scared for a moment, then rushed to fetch Leah, while Maryam got the names and their phone number from Jessica, ready to dial it. Soon Leah was beside them.

“Jacob explained, Mrs Anwar. I am ready to speak.”

“Excellent. You parents are Frederick and Gertrude Abrams, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am, but they are just Mum and Dad to me!”

“Evangelical Christians? - whatever that is!”

“Yup. Strong belief in the Bible and its teachings. Not keen on the structures and rules of the main Christian churches. Almost scary at times.”

“Sounds like some Imams I have heard about. Do your parents believe in violence towards non-believers?”

“Non-believers? Do you mean atheists; non-Christians; or people who are not Evangelical?”

“Ah, that depends on your viewpoint. Extremists think they are simply abiding by the Word of God or Allah, even if they are selective about which words they choose to adhere to.”

“I would say: non-violent, but their words could be violent at times. That is scary enough for me.”

“So, strong believers in what the Bible says?”

“I would say so.”

“So, when the Bible tells them to love everyone, do they try to do that?”

“I wish! No, they have a kind of blindness at times. They are selective about who they think deserves their love.”

“Deserves? What makes a person deserving, Leah? Is there a measurement one can make that you can call ‘deserving’? It seems very much more the views of the viewer instead of the person viewed.”

“I would agree with you, but you don’t choose your parents, do you?”

“Very true. You are a bright girl, Leah. I think you and Jacob can make a go of it, if you always remember that your partner deserves your love; and that goes in both directions. My husband was so inward-looking that he forgot about me, and that turned him from a good man to a bad man. Perhaps if I had known this earlier, I might have changed him, but I was blind to the change in him. Don’t ever let this happen to you. If you get to keep your Jacob, make sure you both understand that a marriage needs to be worked on all the time. It is not ‘happily ever after’ unless you work on making it happy, time and time again, until your minds are in tune to the concept.”

“I hear you, Maryam, and am listening to your words. They are words that Jacob and I can build on.”

“Good. Now, let’s see if we can get your parents to see sense.”

Maryam dialled the number, and quickly found Leah’s mother on the line.

“Hello, Mrs Abrams. My name is Maryam, and I am speaking on behalf of Leah; acting as an adult arbitrator for her and her young man.”

“Who did you say you were?” her mother demanded.

“Maryam is all I am giving you, for my protection. I am the mother of a teenage girl and I ran away from home with her to avoid an abusive husband, so I have some idea of what it is like for you, concerned for your child.”

“Then you will know how I long to hear her voice, Maryam.”

“Then why don’t we have Leah say a few words to reassure you, Mrs Abrams?”

She held the phone out to Leah, who took it and said brightly, “Hi, Mum. How are you and Dad?”

“We have been anxious about you, young lady. You can’t know how frightened we have been for you. Members of our congregation’s prayer group have been praying for you, I am happy to say. Are you all right?”

“I am okay now, Mum. A family have taken us in and are looking after us. They are SO nice, and non-judgemental too.”

“Who are this family, Leah? We need to get you home and safe again.”

“Mum, have some sense. They have promised to help us, so we can’t tell you anything about them for now, just that they want to do the best for us. Maryam is living with them after she was rescued from an abusive relationship. She has explained how if we want to be a couple, we have to look out for each other and not be self-centred.”

Her mother took a gasp of surprise, and asked, “Darling, you keep saying ‘us’ and ‘we’. Who are you talking about?”

“Oh, you don’t know? Jacob is my prospective husband, and we want you and his parents to give us your blessing to get married eventually.”

“Married? You are too young! You don’t know what you are doing!”

“Mum, I certainly know what I am doing. Jacob and I are intended for each other, and intend to marry as soon as it is economically feasible. He is a wonderful man, and I want to spend my life with him.”

“You do? Who is this Jacob, then? Do we know his family? Do they have a connection to our congregation?”

“No, Mum. That is highly unlikely, as he is Jewish.”

She waited for her mother to get over the shock. After a short stunned silence, her mother exclaimed, “You can’t marry a Jew, Leah! It is impossible!”

“Really, mother! What is impossible about it? If we want, we can have a Registry Office wedding, and that is that – married; or you can give us your blessing and we can marry in a more friendly way. Think about it, please.”

Her mother was panicking. “I can’t take it all in: my daughter has a Jewish boyfriend and wants to marry him! You are lucky your father is not at home or he would be putting an end to all this.”

“Would he, Mum? How?”

“He would have you back home in a jiffy, young lady!”

“And how would he go about that, Mum? Be practical: apply common sense to your statements. You don’t know where I am, so how can you do anything without my cooperation? I will put Maryam back on the phone. By the way, she is Muslim, and is a nice lady living with a Christian family.”

“Muslim! Whatever next?”

Maryam came on the phone and spoke to her.

“Gertrude, you have to start living in the multi-cultural world of England today. None of us can afford to be insular, either with our culture or our religion. The Koran tells me that all the Abrahamic religions have to compete in doing good, so I am obeying the Prophet by helping a Jewish and Christian couple to solve their problems with their loving parents.

You surely don’t think that Jacob’s parents are less shocked than you are? Their wonderful Jewish boy wanting to marry a Christian girl: and a black girl, at that. Just think: Jewish and Christian, white and black! They have enough to contend with without their parents making things worse.

I will wish that my daughters marry nice Muslim boys, but it might not happen. I may have to live with that. Similarly, you have to live with your daughter making a lifetime choice that does not fit with your expectations. My friends tell me the Christian Bible is full of admonitions to love one another, and to love your neighbour too. I think the phrase is, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. I think that means try to love everybody, even if they don’t conform to your own ideals.

I am appealing to you, mother to mother, to pay heed to your daughter’s choice of partner. She might have chosen another girl as a partner: would that be even worse, in your eyes? I will ring you back some time later, when you and your husband have had a chance to talk about Leah and Jacob. My love to you both. Farewell for now.”

She put the phone down before Mrs Abrams could speak.

Leah was staring at Maryam with a look of awe. “That was IMMENSE, Maryam! How did you know what to say?”

Maryam looked back at her with surprise.

“I have no idea, Leah. Allah gave me the words, I think. I just spoke from the heart, knowing roughly what you wanted me to say. Did it sound okay?”

“Okay? It was wonderful! I must tell Jacob.”

She scurried off to find him, and he in turn had news to pass on to leah about the call to his parents.

They waited until morning before second calls to the parents were made. Both sets of parents had by now realised that the only way they would maintain contact with their children was to allow them to see each other and profess their love for each other.

Jacob was the one who then insisted that his parents should meet Leah’s parents. He suggested a meal together at a local restaurant, and they reluctantly agreed. Leah’s parents were placed in the same quandary and also agreed to the proposal.

Reg was gleeful at this. “Fiona tells me that once the parents meet and get to know each other as fellow human beings, rather than as members of another culture and religion, things should go better. They will also have to get used to the young couple meeting in one or the other’s home, if they want to retain the love of their children. Despite Jacob and Leah’s professed determination to marry, I think it likely that they will be persuaded to postpone a wedding for a year or two, until after they have left school and started in college or university. The parents will be hoping their love falters and they break up, but to my mind, that is extremely doubtful. That pair are in for the long haul.”

Maryam, who had been listening in, commented, “It may also dull the feelings of the parents towards other religions, when they see that there are good people belonging to other religions. It happened with me, so it should happen with them.”

Frances was of the same mind. “I do believe you are correct, Maryam. From what Leah told me, you did such a marvellous job in speaking with her mother. You have made a true friend in Leah, Maryam.”

Later in the morning, Reginald went into the company office to ask Hermione whether there were any interesting developments. She smiled happily at him and said, “I think you can say so. I found our male target was on Facebook, so I looked through his profile and postings, etc. I found that among other birthday greetings he received was one from the lady at the insurance firm, saying, ‘Happy Birthday, cousin.’

I have not yet formally established that cousin relationship, but that birthday greeting should be enough to put the cat among the pigeons.”

“Hey, that’s great, Hermione. I think you just earned yourself a bonus, if this contract pays off.”

She came over to Reg, put her arms around him, and kissed him, saying, “Now that’s the kind of boss I like!”

A surprised Reg grinned back and said, “That was an unexpected bonus too, Hermione. Now all we have to do is find out in what way she is a cousin to him, and then we have a strong circumstantial case that this was a pre-arranged scam to pretend that a valuable violin was stolen. Whether or not it was a genuine Stradivarius doesn’t matter, just that there was an attempt to defraud the insurance company. They won’t have to pay out, so they have saved a fortune. That should settle the matter.”

Hermione had a thought. “My dad put part of our family tree on the Internet, on one of the genealogy websites. I wonder if either of our targets did the same, or one of their relatives?”

Reg looked at her in surprise. “Worth a try, Hermione. Go for it!”

She went off to explore genealogy websites, and within an hour had her answer. Someone had put up just such a family tree, and against all the standard advice, included living persons. They had assumed if all there was on the tree was the name and no dates, it would be fine, but it was the genetic link between the two people that was needed, and it was shown. Hermione dragged Reg to come and look. He was amazed.

“Can you print out the tree, or at least this part, so that we can show the link between the two?”

She responded, I can either do that, or if it prevents printing, I could simply take the URL of the web page and you can send that to the insurance company as proof that there was collusion between the two, for I am sure the woman never revealed the family link she had to the client.”

“You have the email addy of our client, don’t you? Send that URL to him, with our compliments and a suggestion that there is collusion between their member of staff and the claimant.”

“Will do, boss. Can I kiss you again?”

“I suppose so. I get kissed by so many women these days... !”

She applied her lips to his, kissed him eagerly, and broke off to say, “Yep. I see what they find interesting, and I can tell you are not really trying, boss.”

“I am doing my best NOT to be enthusiastic. My wives might get the wrong idea, Hermione.”

“Who says it is wrong? I will discuss that with Frances, later.”

“Oh.” Reg sounded as if he was afraid of what Frances might say, but had decided to let things be.

For sheer devilment, he said, “I should kiss Jemima as well, so that the staff cannot complain about pay differentials!”

Hermione stopped dead, turned back to stare at Reg in confusion, then came out with a shrug and a laugh. “That is up to her. I am not her keeper, you know; she is a big girl now.”

“Oh.” Reg was stumped; his top card had been trumped. As he pondered, Hermione continued, “At first I thought you were an opinionated nerd, and could not see what the point was about you and these girls, except perhaps as a self-support group, but marrying them? That was something my mind couldn’t cope with. Then when you fought to protect one of your women, at the threat to your life? That made me alter my view of you again. You were like a super-hero, winning despite a knife stuck in your back: phenomenal!”

“Hermione, that didn’t stop you being your old self: concentrating primarily on your own physical and mental comfort. It took Elizabeth to jolt you out of that mindset, not me.”

“I suppose, but then you gave me this job. You trusted me with responsibility for the public face of your new company – speaking directly with potential clients and assessing their needs. You TRUSTED me, Reg, and that was what really rocked my foundations.”

“That was me following my nose, Hermione. I saw that treating people as responsible persons usually resulted in them acting as responsible persons. I guessed that giving you the chance to prove yourself would work, and it did: you are not the same person I met at your parents’ farm. You are a new, improved, woman, and I am impressed at what you have now achieved.”

“You did the same for Jemima. She is delighted with her publicity work, so chuffed because she has found a way to excel with her own talents. Boss, if you think I deserve a bonus, I will share it with her, for I like what she has become under your tutelage.”

Reg grinned at her. “Hermione, there is another example of how you have changed. You feel a responsibility towards your younger sister. Before, she was just your follower, your minion. You see the difference?”

“I suppose I do: I hadn’t thought about it. I was a rather nasty person back then, wanting everything my own way, for my benefit. You didn’t like me, did you?”

“Back then, no. But, I could see that you had potential; you just weren’t using that potential; were drifting along in a self-centred haze. I thought we could help you and Jemima become decent human beings; and what are you now? - Decent human beings!”

“I never saw that, myself. I had no target in life, just being comfortable was all I was concerned with. What Mum and Dad wanted of me, I saw as an imposition and rejected it. They were actually trying their best to help me cope with life in the raw, weren’t they, Reg?”