by Linda Grant
‘Why do you think he tipped his hat to you and asked you for ice-cream?’
‘I don’t know. He is a complicated person.’
‘What did you see in Daddy?’
‘He had beautiful eyes. Even under his glasses. The eyes of a man who looks.’
At breakfast the next morning they gave me my birthday present, a seed pearl necklace, ‘because we know what a terrible time you have,’ said my father, ‘and you need a special thing. Don’t think we don’t know or don’t care what you been through. One thing after another.’
‘Exactly,’ said my mother.
This pearl necklace was a symbol of my parents’ love for me, odd, badly expressed love, but love all the same. And love is stronger than death, as the psalm says, and fiercer than the grave. Is that not so?
I didn’t go to Sándor’s until late afternoon. He told me he was busy with a lot of different matters. More surprises, no doubt. My mother washed her hair and I helped her style it. We experimented for a few minutes with some make-up but we agreed she looked better without and she washed it off.
‘I’m a plain person,’ she said. ‘That’s the way I am.’
When my father came home from work he went out with a pair of scissors in his hands down into the communal garden for the first time since 1944, the final night underground in the air raid shelter. He cut a yellow rose–a bud in the process of uncurling itself–carried it back upstairs in the lift, its thorny stem gingerly wrapped in a piece of toilet paper, then sat at the table and neatly snipped the thorns, and put it in a glass of water, to wear later in his buttonhole.
‘Now that’s an effort,’ said my mother.
The garden was waiting. I had to hand it to my uncle, he had made a wonderful job of event management. The weather stayed fine for us, it was a balmy summer evening, not too much humidity, a bare-arms night, with perhaps a little shawl, and there was every chance that this party was going to be a roaring success. I was reminded of a remark that Claude had made a few days before–that the railways would work perfectly if it wasn’t for the passengers.
The three of us stood under the rosy canvas roof nervously waiting for the first guests to arrive, my uncle holding hands with Eunice. I glimpsed him, for a moment, in his heyday, the Bishops Avenue house and all its expensive trinkets, the diamond wristband of his watch, the suede shoes. He whispered something to her and she laughed.
Minutes passed, and all three of us experienced the panic of party-givers that no guests will turn up, though I knew my parents were already on their way, setting out for the tube station.
But then two figures appeared, a gnome-like individual in a glaringly obvious toupee with a red-faced blonde woman a few inches taller than him, dressed in electric blue velvet.
‘Ah, Mickey!’ said my uncle, embracing him. ‘Nice and early.’
‘Somewhat, somewhat.’
‘He’s not long had breakfast,’ said Sandra. ‘Cold fried fish and ketchup. He calls this a breakfast? I have to stand all day frying fish for him?’
‘Protein,’ Mickey said. ‘Gives you energy. And fish is brain food.’
‘We all know who has the brains round here, don’t we, Sammy?’
‘But your Mickey has a good heart, Sandra, and that counts for a lot.’
‘You must be the birthday girl,’ Mickey said. ‘Do I get a kiss?’
I held up my cheek. His breath smelt of whisky and plaice and tomato sauce.
‘What have you been up to, Mickey?’ said my uncle.
‘Shooting around, here and there.’
‘He slept in the lock-up last night,’ Sandra said.
‘Business, petal, I didn’t want to bother you.’
‘What do you keep in your lock-up?’ I said.
‘All sorts,’ he said, briefly. ‘Anything to drink round here?’
‘Of course,’ said my uncle, ‘and you don’t even have to help yourself, we got waiters will bring it right to you.’
‘What a posh dress,’ Sandra said to me as the men went off to get the bar service started.
‘It was a present from Sándor, but Eunice chose it.’
‘The shvartze lady’s got taste, I’ll give her that. Look at this gown I’m wearing. Only three quid and a few bob extra for the alterations. My Mickey’s got his best wig on. It was made special for him. Beautiful shade of chestnut, and very natural looking, don’t you think?’
‘But you can still tell it’s a wig,’ I said.
‘Well obviously. If you’re going to spend all that money, you want something to show for it.’
The garden now held that air of quiet excitement, of a space that is about to fill up, though some never do and collapse into forlorn despair. Jim from the tango class arrived, and then a couple I didn’t know, and then more tango dancers. Everyone exclaimed about the marquee and the decorations and soon a couple from the Anti-Nazi League entered. The anti-Nazi comrades looked about uncertainly at first, appalled by the decadence of the marquee and the buffet and of course the terrible throne and the gold and silver 25s. I don’t think they even recognised my uncle; it was a long time ago, they had just been children, like me, and furthermore, who would expect to come across the killer of black babies in freezing bedsits, with a woman like Eunice on his arm?
Then seeing the tango crowd looking round in admiration at the décor, they gravitated towards them and soon they formed an animated group discussing the political situation.
‘They would come in the shop,’ said Jim. ‘They’d terrify the children buying their sweeties and the old lady with her magazine. You should see the way they dressed, with the trousers rolled up halfway to their knees and the big boots with the laces and the head with the hair shaved off.’
‘You have to understand,’ said Dave, ‘that Tyndall and his mob are using these kids from the estates to bring back Nazi ideology, exploiting the working class. They’re not just racists, they’re Fascists and instead of the Jews this time, it’s people like you who are in the front line. And we’ve got to counter attack, every chance we get.’
‘Why can’t the police just come and arrest them?’
‘Because the police are on the same side. They support them, they have members in the police.’
‘But the government doesn’t allow—’
‘Oh, the government, those class traitors. You think they care about working people, look at all the unemployment…’
‘And they say we take their jobs. I’ve got a shop—’
‘Exactly. But blacks in this country have always had the shitty end of the stick. Look what happened when you first came here, the terrible housing.’
‘Oh, yes, that was a bad time but…’
The garden was filling. The guests were mingling, eating and drinking. I was scanning the door, waiting for my parents to arrive. Gilbert came, and the ballerina and the plutocrat, bearing their presents.
‘This is a laugh,’ Gilbert said, looking round. ‘What’s going to happen with the throne?’
‘I’m supposed to sit on it, then I imagine people will sing Happy Birthday.’
‘You’re not going to, are you?’
‘No!’
‘How are you going to get out of it? He looks very determined. It’s Sándor Kovacs, isn’t it? I remember doing a cartoon of him during his trial. Eating babies. It was after Goya, of course.’
‘Yes, it is him.’
‘So that’s who you’ve been working for. Fascinating.’
‘Actually, he is fascinating, in a way.’
‘I always wondered if your family was related to him.’
‘We are. He’s my father’s brother.’
‘And who’s the pixie in the wig with the buxom blonde?’
The bow in my mother’s brown stick thrust forward into the garden to test the unstable ground. Only once before had I seen them in such a situation, at my wedding, and the enormity of that occasion had so overwhelmed them that they had barely begun to enjoy themselves before it was
over, and what reminiscences they might have had, any chance to relive vicariously the pleasure they could have felt, had been obliterated almost at once, at the very outset of the honeymoon. So I saw that this time they were determined to make as much of the party as they could, to accept glasses of wine, and twirl the stems around their fingers, even if they took no more than a sip, and to eat what was handed to them without sniffing and making suspicious enquiries about the content and preparation of what was on their plates.
My father saw me and smiled. It was a smile of relief, that they were not in a strange house, entirely amongst strangers.
‘Look,’ said my mother.
‘Beautiful,’ said my father, with tears in his eyes. ‘Our daughter in this setting–like fairyland. We made a daughter, didn’t we, Berta? And look how she turns out, even after all the tragedy.’
My mother lifted her beribboned stick.
‘See, over there.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you polish your glasses before you came out? Look where I’m pointing.’
The stick was raised towards my uncle, who was standing with his arm round Eunice’s waist talking to a couple of meat-faced men in tight blue-black suits whose hands looked as though they could barely hold the wine glasses without inadvertently crushing them.
At this moment a crocodile of schoolchildren pushed past us, led by a woman who was evidently their teacher, because one of them was saying, ‘Miss, miss, I want to go to the toilet.’ My parents shrank back against the wall.
‘They’re here!’ cried Sándor. ‘At last. The proceedings can commence. Now, young lady who is twenty-five today, it all starts.’
‘Come on,’ said Eunice, and took my wrist in a bricklayer’s grip. ‘You come with me.’
I was dragged towards the throne and pushed up the steps. ‘Sit,’ Eunice said. The pulley descended and the crown was lowered on to my head. A number of the guests applauded. ‘Bravo!’ cried the plutocrat, and the ballerina ran forward to the foot of the throne and curtsied, holding the skirt of her party dress. More applause. The crocodile of children arranged themselves into a semicircle in front of me, and my uncle stepped forward and raised his hands. He was using all his power to keep the trembling lower lip under control.
‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,’ he cried. ‘Can you hear me? Yes? I shout as loud as I can. OK, I don’t think we have a lord here this evening, but if there is such a person, then you are very welcome. This is a great day for me. Some of you here know me, some do not, some are thinking, wait, I recognise that man. Yes, I am Sándor Kovacs, the one you read about in the newspapers, the same.’
It had been many years since my uncle’s name had appeared in any newspaper. He was a forgotten man. It took a few moments for my comrades in the Anti Nazi League to recall that this was the monster who bled dry the poor immigrants, but activists are always handy with slogans, which they carry around with them like hand grenades, ready to lob at a sudden foe.
‘Racist scum!’ Dave shouted, raising a clenched fist.
‘There’s no need for that kind of talk,’ Jim said, mildly, but Eunice had more than slogans at her disposal.
She snatched the plate of food from his hand and threw it into a potted palm. ‘You eat a man’s food and call him names to his face?’
‘That was good salmon,’ Mickey said. ‘What a waste.’
‘You can pick it out and eat it yourself,’ said Eunice. ‘And you,’ she said to Dave, ‘shut your mouth and listen to what he’s got to say, maybe you’ll learn something.’
My uncle would not be stopped. He had seen demagogues make speeches at various times in his life, before and after the war. He knew you just drove on and rode out the heckling, and he had understood that there would be heckling. The only guests whose reaction he was interested in were his brother and sister-in-law, whom he could not quite see in the crowd towards the back of the garden, blinded by the spotlight that fell upon the stage. They were his audience, and the young men and young women in their ridiculous clothes and their babyish leaflets were like lint a well-dressed man brushes from his suit. His only worry was the choir of schoolchildren, whose teacher, with a ghastly face, was trying to quietly escort out of the garden without him noticing, but found her way barred by Mickey Elf, who was pointing out to her that she’d been paid cash in hand for the job and he didn’t take kindly to anyone who broke a contract, even if they had a pair of glasses on their nose and a leather music case in their hand.
‘Since I came out of prison,’ my uncle went on, ‘two wonderful things have happened to me. The first is that I found, for the first time in my life, the love of a woman, a good woman who has had her own share of suffering. I fell in love with her because of her beauty, her elegance, her exquisite taste (except where it comes to me, of course, that is baffling, and not just to you, ha ha). But I also fell for her because of her spirit, her strength and dignity and her loyalty.’
He pointed at Eunice. ‘This is her. Does everyone see?’
She was dressed exquisitely, as always, in a black cocktail dress and high-heeled shoes with small bows at the back of each heel. But her face, raised to the stage, dabbed with a spot of rouge on each cheek, was irradiated with an internal brilliance as if a ruby light was switched on inside her. We experience such happiness only once or twice in a lifetime, when we believe (usually falsely) that all our troubles are finally behind us and the future will be what we always hoped. I have never forgotten her face that night. What it meant to her to receive the public recognition of those qualities she’d worked so hard to make real and permanent: the manicure late at night when she was so tired her eyes were drooping and she would have to erase the polish she painted on her nails when she had smudged them and start all over again; the elocution lessons; the fashion magazines she bought instead of records, and studied each night so that when a customer asked her for the latest news about hemlines, she could answer without hesitation.
If my uncle did a good thing in his life, it was that speech: what he told the world about Eunice. And then he went further.
‘So this is the first thing. In front of all these people I declare my love for my beautiful girlfriend, Eunice. Except now she is no longer a girlfriend, she is a fiancée, because this morning I proposed marriage, and she accepts, and we do not yet have a ring, but we are coming to that in a minute.’
Jim’s stricken face. His hand to his head, holding it, as if he feared it would fall off. Eunice, seeing for the very first time what she should have known, what was obvious, even to me, when I first met him at the tango class, when he held me as we danced but his eyes were always on her. How could he compete with the man who bought her flashy presents and took her to expensive restaurants?
But my uncle had not finished with the revelations. ‘What is the second thing we celebrate here today?’ he asked, smiling. ‘Look at another person, the person sitting on the throne, like a princess.’
I wanted to die.
‘I have a niece and today she is twenty-five year old and a beautiful human being. What is she like? Intelligent, curious, sceptical, a high morality and many other qualities. She does not like to see an injustice–she try to put it right. That’s the kind of girl she is. And I see here somewhere, hiding in the dark, like always, my brother, Ervin. Look what you made, look at this beautiful daughter, Vivien! A tribute to you, a tribute. And now we will have a song. Children! Sing. Now.’
The children raised their faces, opened their mouths and warbled together, And I think to myself what a wonderful world. When they got to the end they went straight into Happy Birthday. It was a flawless performance. Applause, and then they broke away, towards the birthday cake which was being wheeled out on a trolley. I was trying to get down from the throne. Once again Eunice took my wrist, as a teacher drags an unruly kid by the ear. ‘You’re going to cut the cake,’ she said. ‘And do it nice.’
‘Congratulations,’ I said, breathless. ‘On the engagement.’
/> My uncle handed me a serrated knife. ‘You make the first cut,’ he said.
I was looking around, trying to see my parents. I had not thought that the reconciliation would happen like this. I had hoped to make a quiet introduction, preceded by explanations and entreaties. I was going to invoke the words of my grandmother, her heartfelt desire to see her two sons together again, I would remind them of all the ghosts who could not rest while there was bad blood between brothers. I had imagined them pausing, then falling into each other’s arms and crying with joy like those TV programmes which reunite long-lost relatives. Despite everything, I was trying to overcome my Kovacs blood–I yearned for a happy ending, when history should have taught me that the best you can hope for is tragicomedy.
I cut the cake then hurried away to find my mother and father but Sándor was there before me.
‘Ervin,’ he said. ‘You came. My little brother.’ He took my father in his arms and embraced him.
I suddenly remembered I had implied that my father had cancer.
‘You!’ cried my father.
‘Yes. It’s me. I’m so happy to see you. You look…’ He searched my father’s face for signs of sickness. ‘No, you look fantastic, you’ll live for ever, you’ll see us all out. You know how long a creaking gate lasts.’
Understandably, my father took this the wrong way but Sándor pushed on.
‘What, is it four year since you come to see me in prison and you bring me the picture of Vivien graduating from university? I want you to meet my fiancée, Eunice, and I want to ask you, as a brother, to make her engagement ring, before your sight fails.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Eunice said, holding out her hand.
I had seen my father silent, but not speechless. His eyes swam around behind the lenses of his glasses like circling sharks.
‘You are the man with the library?’ said my mother.
‘What library?’
‘She told us she went every day to catalogue a library.’
‘No, there is no library. Berta, I’m just telling her my life story so she can make it into a book.’
