“Nathan, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“Fire ahead.”
“Would you mind, on the way home, driving more slowly?”
35
Uses ofsuperglue
I woke up next day feeling full of life. It was late—almost nine o’clock, and intermittent bursts of sunshine were pushing in beneath the elastic of the black knickers. The crying yesterday had refreshed me, like the rain in the night, and so much exposure to the possibilities of glue had fired me up with new enthusiasm for my work. Sitting up in bed I switched my laptop on. The article I was working on was about medical uses of adhesives. Cyanoacrylate (superglue) had been used effectively in emergency battlefield situations in Vietnam to hold wounds together until they could be sutured properly. Now a number of companies were trying to develop specialist adhesives to be used in place of suture. Human bonding. There were two technical problems, it seemed, to be overcome. One, how to get the sides to hold together for long enough for bonding to take place. Two, how to achieve separation without tearing the flesh.
Then I remembered. Cyanoacrylate AXP-36C. I fumbled in the bedside drawer for a scrap of paper to write it down on before I forgot. I tried to picture Rip’s face when he realised he was stuck. I tried to picture his bottom, the agony of tearing flesh as he tried to free himself. Who would rescue him? Who would call the ambulance? Ottoline Walker? Or would it be me? Would I laugh? Would I minister gently to his adhered behind? So many possibilities!
I put aside medical uses of adhesives, just for a moment, and opened my exercise book.
The Splattered Heart Chapter 7
One evening, as the Sinster family wore was were sitting down to their sumptuous tea dinner evening meal in the vast candle-lit dining hall surrounded by deer’s’ antlers and other dead things they heard the plangent pungent poignant melodious twanging tinkling twinkling (oh, sod this) sound of a mandolin assayttailled their eager ears and a moment later a tall dark handsome figure clad eftfy (clad only—what was I thinking of!) in a swirling velvet cloak strode into the hall. After he had finished his performance Mrs Sinster threw him a few coins from her silk purse and said, “Oh, Mr Mandolin Player, please come again. I am fascinated by yourlaf§e mandolin-charming folk culture.”
§
Poor Mrs Sinclair—was I being a bit unfair? When I’d first met the Sinclairs, their world had seemed so alien and intimidating—governed by unspoken rules and veiled assumptions—but she had really tried to make me feel at home, had inducted me kindly into the arcane mysteries of napkin rings and the Daily Telegraph crossword, and I suppose I must have seemed a sullen and ungracious daughter-in-law. At the time, it had irked me that they appeared to have no idea how privileged their lives were. It had irked me the way Mr Sinclair asked, in a hushed voice, whether I’d really met Arthur Scargill; I’m no great fan of the comb-over king, but the way the Sinclairs went on, you’d think he was the Antichrist himself.
It had taken me a long time to realise that the Sinclairs were probably as scared of me as I was of them. Okay, it can’t have helped that on my third visit to Holtham I’d worn a large yellow badge with ‘The enemy within in bold letters. They must have seen me as an outrider of a sinister army bent on destroying order, decency, Horse & Hound, and everything else they held dear. It wasn’t long after the end of the miners’ strike, and I thought they needed shaking up a bit—well, that’s my excuse. Rip had tried to persuade me to take it off, but when I insisted, had stuck up for me valiantly and tried to explain to his bewildered parents what it was about.
“But if it’s supposed to be a secret enemy, I can’t understand why she’s wearing a badge,” I overheard Mrs Sinclair whispering to Rip.
Yes, perhaps I was being a bit hard on Rip, too. But all’s fair in love and fiction. I pressed on.
Surprised in a compromising position with the mandolin player, Gina is expelled from Holty Towers. She protests that it was only a response to Rick’s philandering, and determines to seek revenge by glueing his bottom to a toilet seat. The secret is to match the right adhesive to the adherends. Hurray! That would mean another visit to B&Q (strictly for research, of course.) The trouble is, I couldn’t help feeling a touch of sympathy for Rick. After all, he was just a weak and deluded male—easily led by the cunning spotty Spanish maid—he couldn’t really help it. And Gina should have known better than to get involved with that dubious mandolin player. Something else was bothering me. I tried to focus on the image of Rip’s bottom in the toilet seat, but the other photo from the glue exhibition kept intruding, the little girl, her screwed-up eyes as she tried to pull her hands apart; her scream.
Hauling myself out of bed, I stood at the window and looked down over the garden, stretching my arms above my head and waggling my shoulders, which were still stiff from the cold and tension of yesterday’s car journey. The ground was wet, and the leaves on the laurel bush were dazzling with captive raindrops, but the sun kept coming in and out behind the rain clouds, casting fleeting rainbows across the sky. At the far end of the garden, a haze of mauve crocuses had spread, almost overnight. Birds were hard at work, hopping about in pairs with bunches of grass in their beaks.
Then I spotted Wonder Boy slinking along the edge of the fence, making his stealthy way towards the blackbird couples. I banged on the window and they flew away. Wonder Boy looked up and gave me a long reproachful stare. I felt a pang of guilt. Okay, a visit to Mrs Shapiro was long overdue, I wanted to say to him, but it wasn’t exactly easy, was it? The HELP ME letter Mrs Shapiro had sent was on my bedside table—I’d just scribbled the glue code on it. As I looked at the envelope with its scrawled-out name and address, I had a brainwave.
36
The adhesion consultant
After lunch, I dressed myself up in a red jacket that had belonged to Stella—1 had to leave the buttons undone—and a glittery Oxfam scarf, and pulled a woolly hat down low over my hair. I put on bright red lipstick and an old pair of sunglasses by way of disguise—and made my way to the bus stop on the Balls Pond Road. Though in fact when I arrived at Northmere House I saw that my disguise was redundant, for there was a different guard-dog lady at the reception desk.
“Can I help you?”she barked.
“I’ve come to see Mrs Lillian Brown.”
She consulted her list. “Are you family?”
“A cousin. Once removed.” Well, I could have been.
“Would you sign in please? Room twenty-three.”
She pressed the button that opened the sliding door. And in I went—into the muted realm of the pink carpet, the sickly chemical air, the rows of closed doors from behind which, from time to time, a television blared eerily. On the other side of the corridor was the long plate-glass sliding door which gave on to the courtyard with its square of grass and four benches, now all damp with rain. A demented bleeper sounded constantly in the background, reminding the absent staff that behind one of these closed doors, someone desperately needed help.
I knocked on the door of number twenty-three. There was no reply so I pushed it open. The room was small and overheated, with a terrible deathly smell. A massive television set, volume on at full blast, dominated the room, so it took me a moment to notice the tiny figure lying motionless on the bed.
“Mrs Brown?”
There was no reply. I shouted louder, “Mrs Brown? Lillian?”
I tiptoed over to the bed. She was lying there with her eyes closed. Her hand, I saw, was clutched round the bleeper on its cable. I couldn’t tell whether she was breathing.
I backed out and let the door close behind me. My chest was thumping. A fat woman in a pink corporate uniform was coming down the corridor.
“In here,” I said.
“Are you Mrs Brown’s niece?” She seemed to be unaware of the bleeping alarm.
“Actually, I’m…”
“I hope you’re not smuggling cigarettes.” She scrutinised me fiercely.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”
“Oh, dear. Was anyone hurt?”
“We was saved by a dog.”
“Really?”
“A mongrel,” she snorted. “And then they tried to smuggle in a gearbox.”
“A gearbox? What for?”
“Beats me. Anyhow, matron got rid of it. Said it weren’t hygienic.” Her face softened for a moment. “It were a shame really, poor old man. Still, ‘e got ‘is revenge.” She chortled. “Anyhow, we don’t allow that sort of thing in ‘ere. We got rules.”
“Er…I think this lady needs some help…”
But she’d already vanished up the corridor. As I watched the door close behind her, I noticed there was now someone sitting out on one of the benches in the courtyard in the rain, a solitary hunched figure wearing a powder-blue dressing gown and matching peep-toe slippers, puffing away at a cigarette. It was the bonker lady.
I banged on the window and waved. She looked up and waved back. But when I slid open the door and went out to join her in the courtyard, she put on a sulky face.
“You never brought me cigs.”
“I did,” I lied. “You weren’t there.”
She sniffed as though she knew it wasn’t true.
“Are yer lookin’ for ‘er? Yer pal?”
“Mrs Shapiro. Yes.”
“She’s in solitary. She int allaared visitors.”
“Why not?”
“Bin a naughty gel, ent she?”
“Why? What’s she done?”
She stubbed our her cigarette on the path and threw the butt into the middle of the lawn, where there was already quite a scattering.
“It’s what she ent done. She won’t sign the Powah. Keeps refusin’. Bonkers, if yer ask me. They won’t let ‘er aht till she signs it.”
“Do you know which room she’s in?”
The rain had almost stopped. She pulled a cigarette packet out of her dressing-gown pocket and looked inside. There were only two left.
“Yer won’t forget me cigs next time, will yer?”
“No. I promise.”
She placed one of the cigarettes between her lips and let it rest there for a few moments, savouring the anticipation, before she took the box of matches from the other pocket.
“Twen’y-seven.”
“Thanks.”
“If she in’t there, she’ll be watchin’ telly in twen’y-three. That’s my room. They all watch telly in there.”
“Isn’t there a day room?”
“Yeh, there is. But the telly’s crap.”
Mrs Shapiro’s room was just as small as the other one, and just as hot, but the smell was more sickly than deathly, and there was no television. She looked dreadful. She was lying on her bed, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. Her hair was wild and matted, the silver line now a highway, her skin loose and baggy, folding in deep yellowy wrinkles around her mouth and chin.
“Mrs Shapiro?”
“Georgine?”
She struggled to her feet groggily and stared at me.
“How are you?” I hugged her. She seemed so frail, like a bird. All bones.
“Thenk Gott you come.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come before. I tried, but they wouldn’t let me in.”
“Did you bring me cigarettes?”
“Sorry. I forgot.”
“Never mind. Good you heff come, Georgine. I do not want to die in here!”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and immediately started to cry, her skinny shoulders shaking. How small and bent she seemed. I sat beside her, stroking her back until the sobs turned to sniffles. Then I passed her a tissue.
“We’ve got to get you home. But I don’t know how.”
“Too much guards in this place. Like in prison.” She blew her nose, then opened up the tissue to examine the snot. It had a horrible greenish colour. “How are my dear cats?”
“They’re fine. Waiting for you. I’ve got some young men staying there, looking after them. Fixing the house up.” I saw the look of alarm on her face. “Don’t worry. As soon as you’re ready to come home, they’ll leave.”
The smell in the room was making me feel faint. I stood up and opened a window. The soupy overheated air stirred, and we could hear the traffic on the Lea Bridge Road, and voices of children playing somewhere nearby. Mrs Shapiro took a deep breath, and her eyes seemed to brighten a bit.
“Thenk you, darlink.” She squeezed my hand, studying me with her wrinkled eyes. “You looking better Georgine. Nice lipstick. Nice scarf. You got a new husband yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe soon I will heff a new husband.” She smiled archly to see the look of surprise cross my face. “Nicky is saying he wants to marry mit me.”
“Mr Wolfe?”
I gasped. The scheming devil! I remembered how fluttery she’d been when he’d sat in her kitchen plying her with sherry.
“I was thinking he would be for you the perfect husband, Georgine. But you heff showed a little interest. So maybe this is an opportunity for me.” Her smile now was coyly flirtatious. She had cheered up considerably. “What you think? Should I marry my Nicky?”
“Does he know how old you are?”
“I tolt him I was sixty-one.” She caught my eye and giggled. “I am too notty for you, Georgine, isn’t it?”
“You are a bit naughty, Mrs Shapiro.”
“Why get ready for the grave? It will catch you soon enough anyway, isn’t it? Why not to enjoy the moment as it flies.” She flapped her hands like birds’ wings. “You know Goethe?”
I shook my head. Then I thought of something.
“Maybe it’s because…” I remembered his intake of breath on the phone. “I told him you had a son.”
A son who would inherit her estate. Unless, of course, she remarried.
She looked at me sharply. “How you know about this son?”
“The social worker told me. Mrs Goodney.”
She stopped. I pretended to be looking out of the window. Go on, go on! I was silently willing her, but she went quiet.
After a few moments, she said, “Ach, this woman. All she thinks about is how to shvindel me. I told her I heff a son because she was wanting me to sign the Power of Returning. I said my son will be returning. He will heff the house.”
“But he’s not your son, is he?” I said gentry.
There was a pause. “Not mine. No.”
“So who was his mother?”
She sighed. “This whole megillah is too long for you. You will be falling asleep before I tell it.”
“But tell me anyway.”
“It was the other one. Naomi Shapiro.”
§
Little by little, I drew it out of her. Her real name was Ella Wechsler, she said, pronouncing it carefully, as though not quite sure it belonged to her. She was born in 1925 in Hamburg. I calculated that would make her eighty-one. Her family was Jewish, but of the pick and mix variety. Speck but no sausages. Sabbath and Sunday. Christmas as well as Hanukkah—not that all this made any difference to the Nazis, when the time came. Her father, Otto Wechsler, ran a successful printing business; her mother, Hannah, was a pianist; her two older sisters, Martina and Lisabet, were students. Their house, a solid four-storey villa in the Grindel Quarter, was a hanging-out place for musicians, artists, heartbroken lovers, dreamers, travellers arriving or departing, four cats, and a German maid called Dotty. There was always coffee mit schlagsahne, always music and conversation going on. She chuckled.
“We were better at being German than the Germans. I thought this life was normal. I did not know such happiness was not permitted to Jews, Georgine. I did not know what it means to be a Jew until Herr Hitler told me.”
But by 1938, Hitler’s message was loud and clear—clear enough for the family to realise they had to get out of Germany before things got worse.
“You see in that time Hitler
was thinking only how to clear out the Jewish people from Germany. The plan for exterminations came after.”
The Wechslers—Ella, Martina, Lisabet, and their parents, fled to London. Ella was nearly thirteen years old, Martina was seventeen, Lisabet twenty. In 1938 the Wechslers had been able to bribe their way out of Germany, but England did not hold out her arms in welcome. The 1905 Aliens Act meant that they could only come to Britain if they already had a job to come to.
“Even the English they did not want us. Too many Jews were running away from pogroms in Poland, Russia, Ukrainia. Everybody thought it was a big sport to chase the Jews, isn’t it?”
Through a cousin on his mother’s side, Otto Wechsler had managed to secure a job in a print shop on Whitechapel Road—it was a huge ancient Heidelberg press which he coaxed back into life. The owner, Mr Gribb, was a widower from Elizavetgrad who had changed his name from Gribovitch when his family fled the pogroms in 1881. Hannah Wechsler became his housekeeper. Lisabet worked in a bakery. Martina trained as a nurse. Ella went to the Jewish school in Stepney.
They lived in a poky two-roomed flat above the print shop (“Everything we touched was bleck from the ink”) in the heart of the East End Jewish community, and they counted themselves blessed.
They received coded letters via Switzerland from their family describing the impact of the Nuremberg Laws, the enforced wearing of yellow stars, the terror of Kristallnacht, the expropriation of businesses, the expulsion from the professions (Cousin Berndt turned out of his surgery and made to sweep leaves in the park), the public humiliations, the increasingly ugly assaults in the streets (Uncle Frank’s front teeth broken by a cheering, jeering gang of schoolboys). Actions that an individual would find morally repugnant became amusing when there was a crowd cheering you on. Then the mass transportations started, and the letters stopped.
I felt the tremor in Mrs Shapiro’s shoulders, the long catch of her breath. We were still sitting side by side on the bed. The light had faded in the window, and the roar of traffic outside intensified with the onset of rush hour. But we were in a different world.
2009 - We Are All Made of Glue Page 24