Relatively Strange Read online

  In the midst of all this conviviality, at around 6.00 o’clock, there’d be a lot of inter-sister muttering and bustling and all at once the huge table in the living room, around which we were crowded, was groaning with what Grandma and the Aunts called deprecatingly, ‘A little something’ as in, “Stay, have a little something – just what we had in the fridge”. And they’d dismiss with a modest wave of the hand, a week’s worth of choosing, shopping, chopping and cooking. Why on earth such store should be set by not seeming to have gone to any trouble, was just another of life’s little mysteries.

  At these gatherings were always honorary family additions, fixtures by tradition if not blood. People like Auntie Esther, she of the certain aim, of which more later, and Aunties Hannah and Ginnie spinstered by the ’14 -‘18 War, sweet-faced and patient. Morrie Schwartz was another. In a shinily shabby grey suit, infused with the scent of the eye-wateringly strong peppermints he’d manoeuvre ruminatively from one cheek to the other he’d sit, still and vacant in the armchair by the window, watching traffic pass on the road below. He was treated gently, with kindness and spoken to loudly and slowly. We were told we must always smile at but not bother him. He was, Grandma mystifyingly told us sixpence short of a shilling.

  His entire close family mother, father, twin brothers and a much older sister had been lost to a V2 one bloody night in the East End. He’d received a severe head injury but survived. His mind wasn’t like other people’s. It was divided by a rigid barrier. In front of this wafted random thoughts – might another piece of cake spoil supper? Was that the third or could it be the fourth Morris Minor to drive past? I once, with curiosity probed beyond the barrier and in a few shocking seconds understood why it was there. Fire rained, gobbled and spat. A miasma of brick dust and ashes coated and clogged throat and lungs and overall and over and again someone was screaming. I was unspeakably shaken and for a good while afterwards, fearful of going anywhere near him.

  On the opposite landing to Grandma and the Aunts and therefore included much of the time in family gatherings were Mr and Mrs Kalter. Kind, accented, short and plump, Mrs Kalter was always Baruch Hasheming (tanking Gott) for everything from a portion of Stuffed Monkey to their timely pre-war flight and their continued health in the face of so much adversity, “So, I hev a little pain in the choints, what’s to complain about?” and she would mime spitting into the wind three times,

  “Peh, peh, peh.” to ward off the evil eye – it never did to sound smug and tempt fate. Of all the many benefits of their adopted country for which she was so grateful the Royal Family, “Gott bless und keep”, ranked pretty high on the list. To them she had formed a fanatically loyal attachment and throughout the Kalter abode, newspaper and magazine shots of H.R.H. and family sat in egalitarian chumminess, side by side with equally carefully framed and cherished Kalter clan wedding and bar mitzvah shots.

  “This mein brother Aaron, oveh sholem, at our wedding, this Elizabeth, Gott bless, learning to fix an engine, don’t she look lovely in that uniform?” Mrs Kalter’s main occupation when not dusting the royals was frying fish and at any hour she could be found, wrapped in a voluminous red and white check overall, hair hygienically scarfed, manically frying enough gefülte fish balls to sink a battleship.

  “Feh. What is she doing in there?” Grandma would complain, “How many fish balls can two people eat already?” The smell of frying fish often permeated the entire block not to mention the Kalters and their miniature poodle Willum.

  Mrs Kalter died quietly of a sudden heart attack when I was about nine and after that, Grandma and the aunts made sure Mr Kalter came into them for a hot meal at least a couple of times a week. The first time he came over they fried fish for him. He thanked them and explained that he’d loved his wife dearly, she was his angel and soul mate but if he never smelt, saw or ate another fish ball as long as Gott saw fit to leave him on this earth, he’d die a happy man. Devotion sometimes takes strange forms.

  *

  My father’s family were considered a bit odd – or so my mother held, although if that wasn’t a pot and kettle issue, l don’t know what would be. My paternal grandmother died young and my grandfather remarried but not until he was well over sixty. His bride, Bertha, hailed from somewhere called ‘Up North’. She was, at the time of the marriage in her early forties and, I once overheard my mother say, ‘Properly on the shelf’, although I really couldn’t imagine where might exist a shelf sturdy enough to accommodate such an impressive girth. She brought to the marriage a funny way of talking; a humour by-pass; several budgerigars; a propensity for pickling red cabbage and within nine months and to the surprise of all, a baby.

  Grandpa and Bertha lived in Shepherds Bush, in a tall, narrow, middle of terrace house maintained in a permanent state of twilight because Bertha held that ‘Sun never did carpet any favours’. Our visits to Aunt Bertha and Grandpa were usually usefully combined with a trip to Uncle Doddy, the dentist who’d been treating all members of the family for years. It has to be said, although I didn’t realise till many years later, Uncle Doddy was no stranger to a bottle of Scotch. Despite this he was marvellously light-fingered and light-hearted, albeit light-headed to boot. Mind you, his habit of firmly and unabashedly pinching any female bottom young or old which came within hands-reach would, nowadays without doubt have resulted in him being struck off one register and put on another!

  “Killing two birds with one stone.” Was how my mother once tactlessly summed up the dual dental and familial visiting arrangement, as we arrived at Grandpa’s house and were engulfed in a cacophony of agitated budgerigars. Bertha, who wouldn’t have recognised a metaphor if she tripped over it, paled visibly and had to be hastily reassured. She paled even more later that afternoon when, bored with grown up conversation and multiple helpings of red cabbage, I lifted the baby out of her crib and gently swung her round and round. She was fine, loved it and I certainly wouldn’t have dropped her on the floor if Bertha, catching sight, hadn’t let out an eldritch and totally unnecessary screech which gave me the fright of my life.

  Sobbing, and pressing the now screaming infant to her bosom, Bertha swore blind she’d seen her fly through the air. Mark her words, she said, there was something more than a bit odd about me. Well, naturally, my mother leapt instantly to my defence. The conversation became a trifle heated and recriminations and a few home truths were exchanged that perhaps would have best been kept under individual hats. My mother, in her fiercely partisan re-telling of the incident was not slow to intimate that Bertha was prone to imagine all sorts of things and indeed, what could you expect, falling for a baby at her time of life and goodness only knows what the shock of that did to you. But thereafter relations were always a little strained and Bertha spent years watching me uneasily out of the corner of her eye.

  Chapter Three

  It wasn’t until I was five that I became consciously aware all was not as might have been expected. But thinking back, there were probably earlier indications. Dimly recalled, is a trip to a small sea-side zoo with my father. The reptile house was distinctly stinky and in a murky pool lurked a solitary crocodile. It took one look at me and opened its jaws wide. It was probably just yawning, there didn’t seem much there to occupy a crocodile, but it scared me rigid and I think I might have instinctively reacted and done something from inside my head. The crocodile froze for a second or two before with alacrity, turning tail and scampering to the farthest corner as fast as his stumpy little legs could carry him. I used my own stumpy little legs to similar effect, in the opposite direction. I’d got quite a distance by the time my father caught up with me.

  Waiting for the day of my fifth birthday party was an agony of anticipation. All year I’d been going to other people’s parties – pleasant enough, but when someone else is getting the presents it’s always tough to summon up the right degree of enthusiasm isn’t it? Naturally, the family turned out in force for the occasion, seated at one end of the garden and looking on whilst shrieks of delig
ht and outrage issued from a game of Blind Man’s Buff at the other. Auntie Esther was there with Prince, a lion-faced chow with halitosis, morose expression and unpredictable disposition. A description, come to think, which applied equally well to his owner. These two would have had less than nothing to contribute to a fifth birthday party but, fixtures at all family do’s, could not have been left out of this one.

  Events were running pretty much par for the course, until our cat let valour overtake discretion and chose a quiet moment in the conversation to stroll, with studied insolence across Prince’s field of vision, upon which all hell broke loose. Prince, who’d been surveying the party with habitual malevolence, struggled wheezily to his feet, barking wildly. Smudge arched his back and hissed, secure in the knowledge that the dog thing was restrained by a lead which, knotted round a chair-leg, was threatening to choke him as he lunged impotently. And thus the incident might well have passed, were it not for the intervention of Auntie Esther who, with astonishing accuracy lobbed a vicious, over-arm, smoked salmon bagel. It struck the unfortunate feline fair and square on the nose. He retired, hurt and at great speed, to the upper branches of the nearest apple tree.

  Drawn by the commotion, I took in the situation and quite frankly found my sympathies fully with the cat. A fully loaded bagel’s no laughing matter. By now, Smudge was playing to the gallery. He could, of course, have descended as easily and swiftly as he’d gone up, but that really wasn’t the point. It was his house, he was our cat. So as a gesture of solidarity, I flew up and got him. It wasn’t that high, it only took a moment and seemed the right thing to do, I didn’t think twice.

  Pet in arms, I drifted gently back down – to silence. Not something you encounter often at a Jewish gathering. As far as I recall, it was the first time I’d actually flown more than an inch or two off the ground. But you know what it’s like at five, you’re always finding you can do things this week, you couldn’t do last, and I could already see any number of ways in which it might come in handy. It began to dawn however, from the frozen expressions and unnatural silence, counter-pointed by shrieks from the children still playing at the other end of the garden, that the family weren’t half as tickled as I.

  I put Smudge carefully down and he stalked off, tail and nose held high and honour satisfied. Then everyone began talking at once and I learnt something that’s stood me in good stead ever since – when people can’t believe their eyes, they usually don’t. A sort of instant, judicious rationalisation takes place. A chorus of disapproval did, however smote the air.

  “… trees? How comes climbing trees?”

  “… fall, and they’ll end up feeding you through a tube.”

  “Remember Renee’s boy … on his head, not been right since.”

  “… and in such a lovely new dress.”

  Grandma declared she had one of her heads coming on and sank back in her chair with her eyes closed. Auntie Esther, hand buried in the area between what would have been her neck if she’d had one and her waist – though that hadn’t been seen in a while either – said her heart was doing what Dr Dannheiser said it mustn’t and someone better run quick for her pills. Auntie Edna told my mother sharply this was what came of not being firm enough with the child, thanked God I hadn’t been killed before their very eyes, touched briefly on the toilet incident and said she supposed it was down to her to go in and refill the pot.

  My mother didn’t say much at all and when she did it was in an odd and artificially cheerful tone, “Pass The Parcel next I think.” she said, accompanying this with a brisker than necessary hand on my back, pushing me in the direction of the other children. Inside her head though, all sorts of thoughts were tangled up in each other.

  *

  My mother was a small, neatly made woman. Intelligent, articulate and invariably courteous. As physically demonstrative as her mother and sister were not, she was let down only, but severely, by an inappropriate sense of humour. This was never tickled so much, as by somebody falling over.

  I remember once, proceeding at a suitably stately pace to catch the 113 bus for tea at Auntie Edna’s. Grandma, despite me on one side and my mother on the other, lost her balance at the foot of the subway stairs. She was a solidly built woman – we weren’t. For a ludicrous few moments the three of us, interlinked, lurched from one side of the passageway to the other like an ill assorted trio of drunks. Then gravity prevailed and we collapsed in an ungraceful, undignified heap. It was all just too much for my mother who was rendered hysterical and helpless, tears streaming, breath whooping. Grandma, hat rakishly askew, legs akimbo, berating her with several well-chosen if unladylike epithets only made matters worse.

  My mother and Auntie Edna shared what my father used to wryly call ‘An eye for a bargain’. They adored the Sales and having planned their strategy, would descend on Oxford Street with the military precision and implacability of a crack commando unit. If there was one thing, up with which they would not put, it was creasing in any garment, let alone one they were thinking of purchasing. To establish whether required standards were being met, material was seized, squeezed and reviewed with an über-critical eye. The underarm area of a garment was also subject to two expert noses to ascertain it hadn’t previously been tried on by a person not as attuned to the benefits of Odor-Oh-No underarm deodorant as they should have been. It was always possible to track their rapid and decisive progress across a sales floor, by the tell-tale trail of crumpled rejects swinging sadly on hangers. My father, on the occasions he was forced to venture out with both of them, would lurk mortified nearby and adopt a contemplative expression. So successful at this was he, that people often mistook him for a floor manager and were apt to call upon him for directions. Too polite to disillusion, over the years, many a lost shopper had cause to be grateful for his concise and correct instruction.

  My mother’s unquenchable optimism was neatly counterpointed by my father’s boundless pessimism so between them, they maintained a fairly even keel. He was a talented musician, touring during his teens and early twenties, playing theatres all over the country. Faded, dog-eared photos show him smiling at the piano, unbelievably young and as yet unscarred by the conflict to come, although he always said he had an easy war. Once they discovered he could play a variety of instruments, he was seconded to Ensa. But that wasn’t the whole truth. There was a period about which he’d never talk, working as a medical orderly on the wards. It gave him memories which I think coloured him thereafter. When he was demobbed and with marriage on the horizon my father began working at the café owned by my grandfather, a temporary arrangement which imperceptibly slipped into permanence, although he continued his music, supplementing our income by playing the piano at an unending succession of weddings, bar mitzvahs and ladies nights.

  Throughout my childhood, my mother contributed to our household budget as one of a team who answered problem page letters for Woman magazine under the name of agony aunt Evelyn Home. Her portable Olympia typewriter was kept on the kitchen table, fully loaded with paper and carbons so she could write between household chores and the staccato tap rap tap was a comforting and consistent background to family life. Our postman daily delivered fat, brown parcels forwarded from the magazine and crammed full of anxiety. Many of the letters were easily dealt with, others she agonised terribly over. She had a rule-book, which laid down strict guidelines on what was allowed to be written and what was verboten. My mother believed in calling a spade a spade and allaying misplaced anxiety wherever she could but waged a constant war of attrition with the magazine editor who was inclined to red-pen anything she considered ‘Too biological!’.

  Chapter Four

  It took me a long and puzzling while to understand what other people could and could not do. Children learn by influence and example but that rather presupposes we’re all marching to roughly the same tune. And whilst it was simple enough to grasp picking your nose in public didn’t come under the heading of good manners, other issues often proved more elus
ive. After the distinctly negative reactions to my virgin flight at the party, I instigated cautious investigation amongst peers.

  “Do you fly?” I’d ask friends. Most were gung ho to go but if the spirit was willing, the flesh proved disappointingly earthbound and I’d watch in bewilderment as they ran around, flapping their arms wildly. It pretty soon dawned on me it wasn’t so much they didn’t want to fly, they genuinely didn’t know how.

  Looking back, I know my parents, not unnaturally, were more than a little put out by the incident at my party but dealt with it in their individual ways. My mother worked on the principle that she hadn’t really seen what she thought she had. Even if she had, she reasoned, it was almost certainly something that was just a very odd one-off. My father’s, bleaker view, was that it might not be.

  I know they conducted casually cautious inquiry amongst other family members seeking possibly a family history of the ‘unusual’. Perhaps stories of a related crazy Sadie, flying from stetl to stetl in years gone by would have made them feel better, but there didn’t seem to be any such precedents lurking. So, for their different reasons, they adopted what could have been viewed as a somewhat ostrich approach to the issue. And, of course, they made it as crystal clear as they could, without actually nailing my feet to the floor, that flying was out – not to be done – under no circumstances, never. Ever!