Going Gently

by David Nobbs

  She gave Heinz a really affectionate smile. He opened his eyes wide as if to say that he hadn’t a clue what was going on, then he smiled rather uncertainly.

  ‘Tell them about your travels, Daniel. It makes a good story,’ she said.

  ‘Does it? Oh.’ Daniel accepted, wryly, that he had been relegated, for reasons he probably didn’t yet understand, from potential lover to comic turn. Well, never mind. He would oblige. He was an obliging sort of chap. ‘Well, in Tregarryn I found it all, ultimately, pointless. I went to Russia. I felt it was the obvious thing for an idealistic communist to do. It turned out to be the worst thing for an idealistic communist to do, especially a Jewish one. I decided that I needed to be a Jew first and a painter second. I went to Palestine. But in Palestine my work became dull and didactic. It became political and vulgar. I returned to Europe.’

  ‘And when Daniel says “I”,’ interrupted Kate, ‘he means his entourage. The ever-loyal Olga, and Ruth, Barbara and Reuben, whose education has been unconventional, to say the least.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Daniel. ‘We went to Greece. Olga taught the children, I painted. I painted the classical landscapes in modern style. No longer didactic. So little didactic that they became meaningless.’

  ‘You thought they were,’ said Kate. ‘They aren’t.’

  ‘I decided to abandon painting as thoroughly as I’d abandoned Judaism. I sought the physical life. You don’t see me as a man of the soil? I’m sorry. Anyway it wasn’t the soil. We went to Lincolnshire. After the Peloponnese, Grimsby.’

  He paused, for dramatic effect. Kate, who knew the story, waited, wondering which of the two men would need to say ‘Grimsby?’ first.

  It was Walter, of course. Heinz had never heard of Grimsby and couldn’t realise its strangeness in that context.

  ‘Grimsby?’ asked Walter.

  ‘Grimsby. I decided to become a fisherman.’

  ‘Good Lord. And how did you like being a fisherman?’

  ‘Oh, I never became one. I looked at the sea, and it was too rough.’

  He laughed his surprising, high-pitched laugh. His laugh was irresistible, and they all laughed. Stimulated by the strength of their drinks, and excited by the sexual tension and the subsequent release from it, and roused by the glamour of the occasion, and picturing pale Daniel staring at the waves in horror, they got the giggles. Tears streamed down their eyes. Once they’d started, they couldn’t stop. Bertrand, the supercilious Parisian maître d’, approached them with the air of a man investigating a problem with the drains.

  ‘Your table is ready,’ he said in such strangulated vowels that he set them off into fits once more.

  Bertrand led them across the great art deco restaurant, which looked like a cross between an Odeon cinema and the restaurant of a great ocean liner. Heads turned to look at the strange group – a beautiful lady in her mid-thirties, wearing an excessively plain dress; a tall, ungainly man in evening dress with riotous black hair; a very erect, precise man in an expensive but old-fashioned suit; and a funny little Jewish figure in a smock and wearing a flat cap, his secular yarmulke, and all of them giggling uncontrollably. Bertrand looked fixedly ahead, as if disassociating himself from them, and led them to the worst table in the room, right by the door to the kitchens, and, to his fury, none of them minded a bit.

  The laughter soon ended after they’d sat down, and they settled to the serious business of eating. The food at the Bandalero, if hardly innovative, was classical and delicious. Kate’s galantine of chicken en chaud-froid was exquisite, Walter’s pheasant pâté was coarse and full of flavour, Daniel fell upon his smoked salmon roulade with the air of a man who expects to be banished to the wilderness before breakfast, and Heinz ate his jambon persillé with an intensity of concentration that made him seem oblivious to the rest of the world. Lying in hospital, sixty-three years later, being fed intravenously, Kate could still salivate at the memory of the galantine.

  Their hunger somewhat assuaged, they began to talk seriously during the fish course. Daniel recalled overhearing someone saying, at an exhibition, ‘That little Jew-boy’s pictures are quite striking,’ and being chilled to the marrow. ‘I would rather be described as a little shit,’ he said.

  ‘Daphne referred to you as a little shit on my wedding day,’ said Kate.

  Walter frowned.

  ‘I should have said “On my first wedding day”,’ amended Kate hastily. ‘Don’t look like that, Walter. I haven’t forgotten ours.’

  ‘Did she?’ said Daniel. ‘Well, there you are, you see. Not upsetting in the least.’

  Heinz put down his knife and fork, and said, ‘Let me tell you why I left the N​o​r​d​r​h​e​i​n​m​e​c​h​a​n​i​s​c​h​e​m​e​t​a​l​w​e​r​k​e​n​s​p​i​e​l​w​a​r​e​n​g​e​s​e​l​l​s​c​h​a​f​t. It was because of the toys that were planned. One of them was a clockwork Nazi which goose-steps across the carpet and salutes. They were attempting to get it to say “Heil Hitler”, but they had trouble with the technology. When I left it was still saying “Shit heiler”. The other is a little Jewish corner shop. It comes with a little window and a little hammer and the child can smash the window with the hammer. The window is immediately replaced, a new window pops up and, lo and behold, the happy child can smash the window again. Fifty times he can experience this joy, and even then the little chap won’t need to worry, his proud father will buy him refills. That is how it is now, Kate, in the land of my fathers.’

  He gave them all a faint smile that had no humour in it, and resumed his slow, careful, precise exploration of his sole Véronique. Kate reached across and touched his arm.

  Daniel gave a crooked little smile that had only sadness in it – it seemed an evening for strange smiles – and said, ‘So maybe I have to become a Jewish painter again. Can art stand by?’

  ‘Sometimes art has to stand by,’ said Kate. ‘It’s too important to be sucked into the maelstrom. Mothers have to remain mothers, children children, artists artists. We cannot allow politics to destroy our innocence. Ideals have to be preserved. They’ll be needed when the nightmare’s over.’

  The great room throbbed and buzzed with laughter and vitality. Only at the table by the entrance to the kitchens, it seemed, was there concern for the state of the world.

  Kate looked across at Walter and wondered. He was being uncharacteristically quiet. Perhaps he felt out of his depth. He had never been comfortable with abstract ideas. But it wasn’t like him to be so silent. In the old days he would have barged in and changed the subject to something that interested him. Perhaps he really was a changed man, as he claimed.

  Shortly after the arrival of their main course, Walter looked up from his entrecôte marchand du vin, and asked, ‘Have you approached English toy firms, Heinz?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Heinz. ‘I have put out what I think you might call – excuse my poor English – exploratory feelers. It’s not easy, though. I am not yet au fait with the tastes of English children.’ He smiled at Kate. ‘Sorry, Kate. British children. And these firms have their own men. Good men. Why should they employ an alien?’

  It was the first time Kate had heard Heinz described as an alien. It wouldn’t be the last.

  ‘Would you say you have engineering skills?’ persisted Walter.

  Heinz examined the remark as if it was one of Daniel’s paintings. He thought as he ate, with care and thoroughness, as if his mother had made him chew every suggestion thirty-two times before swallowing it.

  ‘I would say I have quite considerable skills,’ he said at last. ‘My toys are very precise. Some of them are very small. Many of them are extremely . . . er . . . oh, my poor stumbling English . . . intricate. Yes, I think I can say I am a thoroughly accomplished precision engineer.’

  ‘And you are a skilled draughtsman?’

  ‘Of course.’ There was no suggestion in Heinz’s tone that this was a boast. It was a statement of fact. ‘I am an inventor
and a draughtsman. I do not make the things, I design them.’

  ‘Very precise draughtsmanship and very precise physics are what I’m going to need in the years to come,’ said Walter. ‘How would you like to come and work for me?’

  ‘I don’t want charity through the back door,’ said Kate. The moment she had said it, she realised how stupid she had been. It mortified her still, in her hospital bed, to recall how stupid she had been. She had blushed. Thirty-six years old, and still blushing.

  Walter was merciless. ‘What on earth’s it got to do with you?’ he asked, in mock astonishment. ‘I’m offering Heinz a job, not you. Oh! I see! You think you’re going to marry him! Well well! Well, if you do, I hope you’ll be very happy.’ He smiled, adding his tenpenn’orth to the night of the strange smiles, for this was a smile conceived in pain and delivered in anger. Kate was shocked at the depth of his emotion.

  ‘Your remark does not please me either, Kate, I am sorry to say,’ said Heinz, picking his words out in that careful, precise way of his, like the prancing steps of a horse in dressage. ‘I am not happy to hear the offer of a job described as charity. I hope it does not sound immodest to suggest that I just might be of more value to Walter than the money he proposes to pay me. That is, after all, the principle on which businessmen offer jobs.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t spoken,’ said Kate. ‘I wish all of you and all these diners and tables and waiters and chandeliers and all the dreadful magnificence of this place would disappear and leave me to my shame.’

  Daniel reached across and touched Kate’s arm.

  ‘Please, Daniel,’ said Heinz. ‘My turn!’ He turned to Kate and offered yet another variant to this night of smiles – a smile of shy love. ‘Please don’t feel shame, my darling. Only my innate shyness, my clumsiness with the English language and my inability to support you and your family has prevented me from asking you for your hand.’ A waiter approached. ‘Go away!’ Heinz told him. ‘Learn to intrude at suitable moments only.’ The waiter departed hurriedly. ‘Well, Kate, in broaching the subject at all I have conquered my shyness, and my clumsy English may perchance help to emphasise the depth of my feelings.’ He turned to Walter. ‘Walter, do you still want to remove a major obstacle to my marrying Kate?’

  ‘That’s irrelevant,’ said Walter. ‘We mustn’t overestimate Kate’s importance in this. I have a job, a most important job, for which I think you may be admirably suited. God, I’m catching your impeccable English. I sound so bloody formal.’

  The waiter hovered again.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Daniel. ‘Let the poor fellow clear away.’

  They remained silent while the waiter cleared the plates, and then there were desserts to choose. They chose them out of habit rather than hunger. You are in a restaurant, you don’t dare not to order a dessert, so you eat a dessert you don’t want. And all the while, as they chose their desserts, Kate look at Heinz, and he at her, and they exchanged smiles that were rather timid but had a touch of glory in them.

  When at last the waiter had gone, Walter said, ‘Mind you, it’ll be a bonus if Kate starts to think well of me again. I love her so much, you see, that, now that I’ve accepted that I can never have her love again, I need to win her admiration.’

  ‘You have it, Walter dear,’ she said. ‘I think perhaps we can be friends again.’

  Daniel turned to Heinz and said, in a low voice, ‘I think in all the excitement you may actually have forgotten to pop the question. The lady wishes to say “yes”. Give her something to say “yes” to.’

  ‘Will you marry me, Kate?’ asked Heinz.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Kate.

  ‘Thank you, Daniel,’ said Heinz.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Daniel. ‘It frees me from a dangerous fantasy.’

  Happiness fluttered over their table, as frail and as fleeting as a butterfly.

  Then Heinz said, ‘You haven’t told me what this job entails, Walter.’

  ‘I haven’t, have I?’ said Walter. ‘I’ll be converting all my factories to make weapons of war against Germany. The demands of the armed forces will be very precise indeed. It will entail a lot of work, and no glory.’

  The arrival of the desserts at that moment seemed tactless, but they wouldn’t have helped the cause of peace by refusing to eat their peach melba or pear belle Hélène, so they tucked in.

  The cadaverous Bertrand approached the table with the air of a man spreading a dust-sheet over the victims of a traffic accident.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, in a tone that indicated that his real meaning was, ‘Have your English palates proved adequate for the formidable task of appreciating our delicious and subtle French food?’

  ‘No, everything is bloody well not all right,’ said Walter.

  Bertrand reeled. He went pale. ‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘What is the problem, sir?’

  ‘We’re rushing headlong towards another disastrous world war, that’s the bloody problem,’ said Walter.

  The maître d’ sighed. His sigh might have been a sigh of sadness for the destructive folly of man, but to Kate it sounded like a sigh of relief, as of a man saying, ‘Oh, is that all?’

  Sometimes, as she sailed through the stormy reaches of her life, Kate forgot that she was an old woman in a hospital ward, so that it would come as a great shock when Janet said, ‘Well, and how are we this morning?’ or Helen said, ‘Good morning, Kate. How have you slept? Like a log. Good, that’s marvellous news.’ That night, her fifth in hospital, she remained conscious of her surroundings but seemed to float above them, in air kissed by the sweet breath of Wales. It was strange to look down on herself, in bed, while walking with Heinz on the gorse-clad cliffs of Pennard, listening to the wailing chorus of the gulls while also hearing mad Mrs Critchley crying out ‘Rodney! Rodney!’ which was a new one. It occurred to Kate that maybe she was dying, maybe she wouldn’t live long enough to find the murderer of her fifth husband (or her fourth, or not a husband at all, according to . . . well, we’ve been through that).

  She was tempted to speed up her journey through her past. Couldn’t do that! It wouldn’t be fair on Heinz, or indeed on herself. She needed these memories. They had been difficult years at the time, her years with Heinz, lived out as they were under the shadow of war. Now, in retrospect, they were lived out under another shadow as well, the shadow of guilt.

  She couldn’t hurry through his first meeting with the family, and the inevitable warning about Dilys that had preceded it. She squirmed, up there above her bed, as she watched herself travelling with Heinz on the three o’clock from Paddington. Walter had the boys for the weekend. They liked being with Walter. He was kind and he was rich and he behaved towards them as if they were little adults.

  She’d delayed telling Heinz about Dilys until the train emerged from the Severn tunnel and they were in Wales. It was, after all, a Welsh story.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you, Heinz,’ she said, as they steamed towards Newport between the hills and the dunes.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I have an identical twin sister.’

  ‘Good Lord! And you never mentioned her!’

  ‘No, well, it’s a painful subject. I miss her so much.’

  ‘Is she . . . dead?’

  Heinz gripped her hand firmly, but tenderly. The two ladies in the compartment were riveted.

  ‘No. She’s in Canada. Happy with a nice husband I’ve never met and two lovely children I’ve never seen.’

  The train began to slow. The slate roofs of Newport were beginning to dry after the rain. A watery sun shone fitfully.

  ‘Why no mention of her before, Kate? It isn’t like you. We have no secrets.’

  ‘Don’t be cross, Heinz. It’s difficult.’

  The two women began to gather together their shopping bags. The one with the Swan and Edgar bags cast a baleful look at Kate, as if rebuking her for not starting her story earlier. The one whose bags all had Welsh names – John Lewis,
Peter Jones, D. H. Evans – hesitated at the door of the compartment, as if contemplating staying on till Cardiff to hear the end of the story. But she didn’t.

  Nobody got in the compartment, but Kate didn’t resume the story until the train was moving again. She needed the protection of the monotonous clatter of the wheels.

  As the train slid out of the station they passed a herd of men, all writing down the number of the Castle Class engine that was pulling the train.

  ‘Train spotters,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘We have them in Germany too. You were saying it was difficult about Dilys.’

  ‘Yes. My family don’t speak about her. I must ask you never to mention her name.’

  ‘Kate! What happened?’

  ‘An incident. I call it “the event”. I can’t speak of it.’

  A train rushed past them in the opposite direction, rocking their carriage. When it had gone, Heinz spoke very quietly. ‘You must tell me, Kate. What happened?’

  Kate didn’t reply.

  ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll ask Walter.’

  ‘Walter doesn’t know. I never told him. I never told Arturo either.’

  ‘They didn’t mind? They didn’t need to know?’

  ‘Arturo was wrapped up in himself. He wasn’t interested. Walter respected my wishes.’ Heinz raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes, Heinz. He could be very considerate over small matters.’