The age-old feud between the loving mother and the husband had claimed another victim.
Joachim, very slightly inebriated—and why not? It was, after all, his daughter’s wedding—sobered up suddenly and took Joseph by the shoulder and said in a voice not completely void of menace:
“Use her gently. You understand me?”
“I do indeed,” Joseph said. And he thought—That is the final irony; if only he knew I Quiet had fallen upon the little house, and on the workshop, littered with the remains of the wedding feast.
Watching her own hands as though they were those of another woman, Mary had lighted, in her own house, her own lamp.
Joseph said, “What a day this must have been for you!”
“And for you,” she said.
And he had thought,; God is not blind. Far better me than some untried, amorous boy.
He said, “I shall sleep in the shop. I’ve slept in many worse places. You take the bed and I hope you sleep well.”
She’d reached out and taken one of his big work-hardened hands in hers.
“Joseph, this was not of my choice. It happened. It happened to us both.”
“Yes,” he said.
“It happened.” Something almost like resentment tinged his voice as he thought of what the present moment might have been, but for what had happened. Hard on them both.
“It happened,” he repeated, ‘and we have to take it as it is. You don’t look to me as though you’ve slept much these last two nights. Try to sleep now. This is God’s doing and we must leave the outcome in His hands.”
She said impulsively, “I know why you were chosen, Joseph! You’re the best man in the world.”
He said, “No. I reckon I just happened to be handy.” He shouldn’t have said that, he knew as soon as he had said it, and made a clumsy attempt at a joke.
“Praising myself! It’s the best thing you can say of a carpenter—he’s a handy man.”
In the morning the struggle between the real and the unreal tilted a little. She was in her own house, using her own bowls and knife and spoons, taking bread from her own crock and making Joseph his piece to take with him to eat at midday. He went off to work and presently Rachel called for her to go to the spring. She was grateful to Rachel for having broken through the rule about married women walking with married women; she dreaded their eyes, their sly questions. They knew, or pretended to know, many signs which told whether a marriage had been successfully consummated or not. Rachel said, “Are you happy ?” and she said, wholeheartedly :
“Very happy. I have a good man.” And there was that thought again—If only you knew how good.
Leah and Susannah joined them and chatted girlishly about the wedding; and suddenly, there with her friends, on the familiar path she was overwhelmed by loneliness. She thought with longing of Elisabeth and wished with all her heart that she lived nearer.
Towards evening, making a meal with which to greet Joseph on his
return, things seemed ordinary again and continued sountil, in the middle of eating, Joseph said:
“Mary, I’ve been thinking, on and off all day. What are we going to tell people? And when?”
“I don’t know? I wanted you to believe me, and you did. Beyond that I haven’t thought. But I suppose we must .. .” She shrank from the thought of the disbelief, the jeers, even from the commotion that would be aroused by those who did believe. Almost sternly she said, “It is the truth. And it is something that concerns every Jew.”
“Every Jew,” Joseph agreed quickly, ‘and a lot of others as well:
“What others?”
“Herod for one.” As he spoke the name of the King, far away in Jerusalem, she realised how narrow her own imaginative view had been; limited to Nazareth, to—to be honest—the women by the spring.
“I thought of him on my way to work this morning. He’s got less right to the throne he sits on than I have; and he knows that. I can’t imagine he’d ,dance for joy to hear that the promised heir to David’s throne will be born in nine months’ time.”
“That is true—but I should never have thought of it.” You could see why a child—even such a child as this—needed a father and a mother; this was the kind of thing that men thought of, and women did not.
“There’s another thing, too, the Romans. I know our beliefs mean nothing to them, but they’d see danger. The Jews aren’t all that settled yet. Start a story of Messiah about to be born and the. national feeling would stir. The Romans know that, and they’d stop at nothing to forestall it. This is something we should take into account, Mary. They, or Herod, might easily do you an injury. Herod is a master-hand at arranging accidents for people he wants out of the way. And there is yet another thing.. .” There was the faint hesitation, the near-embarrasssment with which she was to become so familiar.
“Nothing you were told sounded as though we were to go shouting from the house-tops.”
“No,” she said slowly, thinking back.
“That is true.”
“Then why not wait,” he said, rather as though they had been arguing.
“Once he’s born he’ll be the Son of God. How he’ll be born or what we should expect is a mystery to me, but once he’s born, God will take care of him, or perhaps he’ll be born able to take care of himself. It’s you I’m concerned with now, and I can see danger for you. Silence may be part of the plan. After all, you didn’t go running to tell your mother, did you? You came to me. And now I have this feeling .. .”
She said, “I should be glad to tell nobody. It’s such a very difficult thing to put into words.”
He nodded.
“I know. With most situations there’s some guide, other people have been the same way and left their tracks. We’re in a situation nobody has ever been in before. We have no guide. I think it would be wise to say nothing until we have some sign.”
“Unless,” she said, “I should see Elisabeth. I might not even have to tell her; she might know. Gabriel told me about her, he may have told her about me.”
He was amazed, as he was to be again with again by the simple, matter-of-fact way in which she spoke of the archangel-as though he were a neighbour, not the awesome, shining presence from the thought of which his, own mind shied away..
He said, “Yes, it is a pity she doesn’t live nearer.” And there the conversation ended for the moment: Into his mind, though, had flashed the thought of how lonely .she must be with a secret of such magnitude that he had urged her not to share with anyone. It was different for him. He had his work, his workmates. Now that the anxiety that had been with him all day was allayed he knew that there would be hours on end when he would not give the matter a thought.
But the thought of her loneliness, brief though it was, had dropped a seed which rooted and grew, and one day—again as he ate his supper, he said:
“How would you like to go and visit Elisabeth?”
She said, “I would like it very much. But how can I? Who would look after you?”
“That same stout fellow who’s looked after me since I was sohigh,” he said, measuring a height from the floor.
“Joseph, the carpenter.”
She laughed.
“You couldn’t be in better hands. But think of my mother; all her plans for the wedding spoiled because you didn’t like coming home to a dead hearth; and then, in a few weeks I go gadding off to make a visit.”
“My fault,” he said.
“I underestimated—a thing that has brought many good carpenters to ruin. You could tell your mother, and anyone else who was interested, that we’re now working such long hours that it would be better for me to sleep on the site. The masons have reared a good lodge and they’d admit me, I’m a craftsman. I’ve only made that trudge in order that you shouldn’t be in the house alone… .”
“Is that true?”
“In part; for your mother, wholly.”
“Then she’ll suggest that I go back home.”
“Not if I have made other arrangements. And I have. I’ve been keeping my ears open. Joel and all his family are off to Jerusalem very soon. You could travel with them. Suppose I wrote to—what is his name?”
“Zacharias’.
“To Zacharias, and made all the arrangements? Then you could go to your mother and say Joseph has done this and that and she will not question it. Would you like that?”