When I Was Otherwise

by Stephen Benatar

  There was a silence. She gradually sensed that perhaps her audience wasn’t wholeheartedly behind her.

  “Not that I mean, you understand, that anything actually does. Get the Jews a bad name. Necessarily. Or ought to. No!”

  She suddenly espied a still better avenue of escape.

  “Of course, I’m just telling you the type of thing so many people say; and personally I find it quite disgusting. Hit a man when he’s down—give a dog a bad name—you know I don’t approve of that! No. I myself believe that it’s not the fact of their Jewishness which is to blame. How could it be? I’ve met some extremely nice Jewish people in my time. No. I ascribe such vulgarity not to their being Jewish, these women, but to their being foreign. Continental. That’s the truth of it. At most you could say, if you really wanted to, that it’s the combination which proves so unfortunate.”

  She nodded and smiled at the two of them, went on with her meal, and felt that she had handled it quite neatly.

  Yet the silence continued.

  “This ham is very good,” she said, to keep the party going. Honestly! Why did it all devolve on her?

  “I’m not at all ashamed of being Jewish,” said Erica, her pale face now looking slightly flushed. “Nor of my being continental.”

  “Dear Lord, of course you’re not!” said Dan.

  Ye gods and little fishes! How could you possibly be expected to keep track of every single detail? Daisy had been so preoccupied with the fact that Erica was Jewish she had momentarily forgotten that Erica was foreign. And, in any case, why did people have to be so boringly sensitive about these things? Daisy sighed; and although feeling somewhat weary endeavoured to gird up her loins anew.

  “Why, there’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of,” she exclaimed, just as emphatically as Dan. “After all, you’ve only got to remember that Christ himself was a Jew.” Except that he’d succeeded in getting out of it, she added to herself, as one would naturally expect of someone whose wisdom and discernment could never have been faulted. “And although you couldn’t say he was exactly continental—well, he certainly wasn’t English either; except perhaps in terms of character, but that’s a slightly different point.”

  “I think I’d like to change the subject,” said Erica.

  The trouble was, Daisy now reflected, she had forgotten just how common Erica was. She herself couldn’t have cared less about class, yet at the same time you had to bear in mind it was always much more difficult to assess the background of a foreigner. Dan, if she remembered rightly, had met Erica in Wolverhampton—or was it Liverpool, or maybe Wales?—when she’d been working in a café. A café! And probably, too, in a café for workmen…although there was nothing wrong with that, of course; workmen were the salt of the earth. Or could be. It depended. But back in Hamburg Erica had been a shopgirl; and those two things taken together could surely be seen as quite indicative. Not to mention this perfectly awful wallpaper, whose only merit was that it was slightly less dreadful than the curtains. And only someone essentially common would have taken her up on that silly little gaffe just now. Anyone with breeding would have laughed and spoken of the weather.

  My word, yes, but how she pitied Dan!

  Well, anybody would, obviously. Yet this was what happened when your parents put you into hairnets! Otherwise he certainly wouldn’t have gone into a workman’s café in the first place. “Was it Wolverhampton?”

  It turned out, eventually, to have been Colchester.

  It turned out, also, to have been a rather foolish enquiry. She had neither expected, nor desired, to be obliged to listen to a eulogy of Dan. But in reviewing the circumstances of their meeting in Colchester, Erica, after a pretty slow start, began almost imperceptibly to warm to her theme; and then appeared quite to forget they had a visitor.

  “And this dear, dear man, he offered to marry me long before he had learned to love me—really love me, I mean! He just felt sorry for me, that was all. This poor little refugee girl, he thought, a long way from her home. Wasn’t that so marvellous of him?”

  Daisy grunted. For the past five minutes she had been staring down in concentration at her plate—wasn’t it wonderful how many different types of salad leaf there were? Until you took the trouble to note their manifold individualities how could you ever properly appreciate them? Now she busied herself with the cutting of a piece of ham. Palma, she wondered? No, probably not; it wasn’t very good. Sad to think it might once have been a piglet frisking through the fields; at some point she must go back to Winnie the Pooh and the Heffalump, she had always meant to. So marvellous of him? Is that what she was being encouraged to agree with? Well, she didn’t feel she could, not with a wholly unqualified response. Rank stupidity is how she might have been tempted to rephrase it.

  “You see, I just didn’t realize,” mumbled Dan, who had himself been looking more at his plate than at anything else during those same five minutes—or had it been closer to fifty and had his own reflections been half as interesting as hers?—“you see, I just didn’t realize what a pearl beyond price I had then been blessed with.”

  “Aaahhh…,” said Erica, gazing across at her husband with equally moist and bovine eyes and reaching out to take his hand. If their guest were now to bring up her lunch, Daisy considered, they would have only themselves to blame for it. Besides—if that lunch were to splatter sufficiently it couldn’t be anything but an improvement to the carpet.

  It was not merely ill-bred. It was also lacking in tact and sensitivity. And even if such schmaltz could have been forgiven in a pair of newlyweds—which actually it couldn’t, why should it?—Dan and Erica had now been married for a full three years.

  A full three years, heaven help us! So, bearing that in mind, what were they trying to hide?

  And at least Andrew never carried on like that, she told herself gratefully, even if Marsha did—yes, in all honesty she could imagine Marsha still carrying on like that. But Marsha was just a sweet and artless girl; you could easily make allowances. Daisy was seldom so fond of people as when she was away from them—with one or two notable exceptions. It was an attitude, as a matter of fact, that was usually reciprocal.

  Mercifully, though, before either Erica or Dan could reverently inform her that they had never exchanged a single cross word in the whole of their married lives, the door was opened and dessert brought in. Well, perhaps there was nothing so enormously merciful about that: stewed apples and custard—no matter how much, if English weren’t your mother tongue, you might do your best to call it compote and crème anglaise! Erica said: “I’m afraid it’s only very plain, Daisy. Had we known, of course…”

  But Dan, thank God (being a man he knew that actions spoke louder than words), at that moment jumped up and fetched the cake, which he had left in its box on the hall table. “A present for you, my darling. Many happy returns!”

  “Oh, is it your birthday, then?” Daisy enquired grudgingly.

  “No, no. He always says that, whenever he gives me a present. And I do have many happy returns, don’t I, Liebchen? Many, many, many!”

  “Yes, I see,” said Daisy. She compressed her lips.

  “Well, I think I don’t have to open it to guess what’s inside,” said Erica; and for one horror-struck moment Daisy really believed she wasn’t going to. “And now I know just how you’ve spent your morning, you bad, bad boy! Bend down a moment.” At which point—providing an opportunity for yet more improvement to the carpet—she kissed him several times upon the cheek. “Now, Daisy, I can tell you you’re certainly in for a treat.”

  “Oh, I thought I’d just had it.”

  They assumed that this was a compliment to the ham and salad. They hadn’t yet started on the compote or crème anglaise. Dan explained to Erica the story of the cake.

  “Then Daisy shall have an especially large piece to make up for it. And a piece to take home with her as well.”

  Daisy interpreted this as confirmation of the hint that she was not required to stay fo
r tea; let alone for dinner. The hint itself had been Dan’s production of the cake, so that it might be eaten for dessert. At first she hadn’t realized its significance.

  And had she been apprised earlier that such would be the case she wouldn’t have come all this way merely to eat lunch. She seldom bothered to eat lunch anyhow, and travelling to Hendon for the sake of some salad and stewed apple was almost like travelling to Greece for the sake of an olive. Though far less interesting, of course.

  Therefore no tea.

  But naturally she had never felt at home amongst the Stormonts. They had never made her welcome despite the fact that all she had ever wanted was to encourage Henry to escape from them. An ambition wholly unexceptionable, she would have thought. Yet in this life—wasn’t it true?—you were judged solely on your achievements, never your intentions. Right from the start they had always sought to push her out.

  Yes, but thank God for Andrew! Between them a Poynton and a Todd-Ferrier would always make a match for any Stormont.

  (She smiled. To be accurate, either between them or separately was what she’d really meant. Well, speaking for herself, at all events.)

  He was a nice boy. A shade pedestrian, a shade pedantic and straitlaced, but it was wonderful how she could bring him out, awaken him more and more to his true potential. She had done that from the beginning, she realized, and the process had been a highly fulfilling one, for both of them. (Just so long, though, as he never got any ideas about their making a match of it in any other way! She’d frequently seen a glint in his eye, poor Aguecheek, and in a sense if she were proved right it would be flattering, immensely flattering, but she wasn’t in love with him, and even if she had been she wasn’t a home wrecker and, besides all that, she’d once been bitten and would now be forever shy. Indeed she would.)

  True to her word Erica had cut her guest a very generous portion. “It’s good, Daisy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, quite good, thank you. I’ll eat it, shall I, then depart?”

  “You mean, leave?” exclaimed Erica. “What, already?”

  “I’d forgotten I’ve got an extra patient whom I have to see this afternoon.”

  “Oh, what a shame!” said Dan. “And on a Saturday! Our own little Miss Nightingale! But at least you’ve time to stay for coffee?”

  She made a show of looking at her watch. “Yes. I imagine I can wait for coffee.” And she was glad to find they had a modicum of conscience. “But all the same, Dan, I think I should prefer it if you didn’t compare me to Miss Nightingale.”

  “The Lady with the Lamp?”

  “I know who Miss Nightingale is.”

  “I thought it was a compliment.”

  “I can assure you I take it as not much of a compliment to be compared to a liar, a bully, a hypocrite, a busybody, an egoist, a betrayer…” She stopped, a little out of breath. “And several other things beside.”

  Dan stared at her.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Why not? It’s true!”

  “That wasn’t how Kay Francis played her.”

  Then, suddenly, Erica began to laugh. “And she—an Englishwoman, too! A gentile, I believe?”

  Daisy’s eyes moved over to her, coldly.

  “I’m sorry,” said Erica. “Excuse me. I really know so little about her—whether she was good or bad or in between. I imagined she was good,” she added, with an evident attempt at appeasement. But she seemed almost under strain.

  “The extent of people’s ignorance,” said Daisy, “never ceases to amaze me; hers, of course, included. I’ve met people who actually knew her. They tell me she’d say anything to put herself in a good light; but from all accounts she knew as little about her own motives as…well, as most people know about them, I should say.”

  “Poor woman,” said Erica.

  “What do you mean—poor woman?”

  “I mean that…all this seems a little…vitriolic. And she isn’t here to defend herself. I don’t understand why you should want to blacken her. After all, despite whatever failings you suggest, she must have done a lot of good as well.”

  “Vitriolic, nothing! I don’t want to blacken her. Why should I? But at the same time I just can’t stand hypocrisy. And I feel nothing but scorn for so-called educated people who don’t know themselves. ‘From the gods comes the saying: Know thyself.’ Well, that’s perfectly true—as I can vouch for—and shall, I hope, until my dying day! ‘Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.’” She glared at them both, and dared them to refute it.

  Erica laughed again, nervously. “Well, we certainly seem to have covered a lot of ground. From Golders Green Road all the way to the Crimea. I’m not even too sure how we got there.”

  “It’s funny,” said Daisy, “that her first name was Florence, too. It’s only just struck me.”

  “Why? What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.” Daisy looked around the upper part of the room and made a faint whistling noise through her teeth.

  “The name of the film,” said Dan, “was The White Angel. We don’t often go to the pictures but we went to the Lido for that one—oh, only about ten days ago! Marsha came with us, because Andrew was having to work late. I should think that by now it’s probably showing in South London. A bit of a trek, I know, but if you really wanted to see it…” He finished hopefully: “And of course you’ve still got the car. Haven’t you?”

  “It was very clearly a reference to your own mother.”

  “Ha!” said Daisy.

  “Oh, and that reminds me,” said Dan, now switching his attention to Erica. “I tried to phone you a couple of times before we got here but the number was engaged. We thought you were probably speaking to Mother. Has she got over the aftereffects of the ‘flu?”

  The maid came in. “Would you like your coffee served in here, madam, or in the drawing room?”

  “Oh, in the drawing room, I think,” said Dan. “Don’t you, Erica?”

  They moved into the drawing room. Dan was glad of the diversion. “These days a lot of people are calling it the lounge. I vote that we should do that as well. Think of the time that it would save! Lounge. Lounge. Lounge.”

  “What did you mean by saying it’s funny that her first name was Florence, too?”

  “Oh, darling! For heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Dan.

  “Well, you may not care, Dan, but I certainly do! And I would have expected some support, indeed, when it happens to be your own mother who is being discussed. Nothing quite so general, now, as Jews en masse… Or quite so indefensible, perhaps, as Germans en masse…” Erica’s hand shook slightly as she poured the coffee.

  “I really don’t remember what I meant,” said Daisy. “Nothing at all, most likely, if I know me! It’s simply not important. I have remembered something, however: the last time I sat in this room it was with Henry.”

  “Was it really?” said Dan, looking at Erica in a noticeably troubled way. “Poor old Henry.”

  She allowed them to think a little about that.

  Then she asked a question.

  “If you rarely go to the pictures—and I can’t imagine you often go out dining or dancing or drinking—what do you do with yourselves in the evenings?”

  “Oh, nothing very much,” he answered.

  “No, I didn’t suppose you did. Somehow.”

  “Read… Do a jigsaw… Listen to the wireless… They put on some interesting plays.”

  “I’m reading The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.”

  “Is it good?”

  “No.”

  Conversation was desultory.

  “Marsha’s a very lively girl, isn’t she? I’m a great admirer of Marsha’s. You couldn’t wish for anybody prettier.”

  “Yes, Marsha’s a grand girl.”

  “Not one of the most heavily endowed up here,” and Daisy tapped her forehead, “but then tell me—these days, who is? Nobody I know; anybody that
you do? Oh, at the club maybe, but that’s altogether different. And at least Marsha doesn’t pretend. That’s the refreshing thing about her: always honest enough to be herself and call a spade a spade, not a…what’s the French for spade? Still. Sometimes I do rather wonder if she’ll manage to hold onto Andrew. Though better not tell her I said so!”

  “But why, Daisy? Why on earth? I’m sure they’re very happy.”

  “Are you? Well, they certainly started on a baby soon enough, if that’s any indication. They’ll probably breed like rabbits supposing they do stay together. When are you two going to set your minds to it?” She enquired about this mainly from Erica, having forgotten she had earlier asked Dan.

  Erica didn’t answer.

  “But whatever made you say that?” persisted Dan, quickly. “About Andrew and Marsha?”

  “Simply that he strikes me as having something more between the eyes than she has; and I’ve often thought it must be hard for a man with any sort of potential to be chained to a thoroughly boring woman. And I only wish Marsha would sometimes display a bit more character! Because a pretty face isn’t everything, you know—I’m willing to bet it’s not. Although I daresay it may sometimes help,” she added after a pause; looking at Erica.

  Erica stood up.

  “Can this be a record? You have insulted me; you have insulted your mother-in-law; you have insulted your sister-in-law. I don’t know whether you’ve insulted Dan yet; but what is worse—far worse—you have actually managed to belittle him in front of me. I would have thought that was impossible. But you, Daisy—you have done it! Should congratulations now be given? Oh, yes. I feel quite sure they should.”

  With which, she left the room.

  There was a silence.

  “That woman,” said Daisy, “is paranoid. You ought to have her treated.” She looked at Dan; then raised her eyes expressively towards the ceiling. “Well, I thought we were enjoying a pleasant little hour of conversation. Didn’t you?”