find yourself a shrink, and
knock this thing on the head, I'm frightened you might end up
losing her.”
As Brenda spoke, guilt and shame began to coat Dan's stomach
like heavy black treacle. It was the same feeling he'd got as a
child the time his mother caught him at the dinner table stuffing
her inedibly fatty salt beef into his school trouser pocket.
Dan couldn't look at Brenda. Instead he concentrated on
scraping his spoon around the rim of his coffee cup and removing
bits of dried-up cappuccino froth. He found himself thinking that
if God was meant to be so bloody merciful, why was he inflicting
all this emotional pain on him in one day?
He began to realize how the ancient Egyptians must have felt
when the Almighty sent down the ten plagues. He was overtaken by an
urge to rush back to the
Vanguard
building and smear the
main entrance with ram's blood, otherwise there would, he felt
sure, be a swarm of locusts hovering over his desk when he got
back.
A nna had just driven round Gants Hill roundabout and, glancing
at a signpost, realized that not only was she no more than
fifteen minutes from Uncle Henry's house, but that the road seemed
slightly familiar. It was then she worked out that she must have
driven through Gants Hill in her lime-green VW Beetle the night in
1980 when she got off with Dan at Beany Levine's party. But years
before that, even, she must have come this way with her parents
whenever they went to visit Uncle Henry and Aunty Yetta.
So when was the last time she had seen them? For a few
minutes Anna trawled through her mind's Filofax, remembering
weddings at the Regal Rooms in Edmonton, Passover meals with
Harry's sister in Newbury Park and Harry's sister's son's bar
mitzvah at the Manor Hall in Chigwell. Then she got it. The last
time she had seen Henry and Yetta was at a particularly poignant
Sunday-afternoon tea party at their tiny Victorian terraced house
nearly thirty years ago.
The Canadian cousins were over from Montreal, and Yetta had
decided to lay on one of her smoked salmon bagel spreads in their
honor. Henry had decided to use the occasion to make a dramatic
announcement about Sidney. Sidney was Henry and Yetta's only
child, whom nobody in the family ever talked about because he was
in his forties and appeared to be having a homosexual relationship
with a pastry chef he lodged with in Kilburn. The family could
never work out what upset Yetta and Henry most—the thought
of Sidney living with a man or the fact that he was doing so in
Kilburn.
On the day of the tea, about thirty people were crammed into
Yetta and Henry's best room. The short, overweight men wore
suspenders. These held up trousers which seemed to Anna to come up
to their chests. They leaned back in Yetta's faded red moquette
armchairs, their chubby fingers looking incongruous gripping the
handles of her pretty pink-and-gold bone-china teacups.
Harry was impressing everybody with how well Maison Gloria
was doing and what a natural Gloria was for the garment trade:
“I tell you,” he said, invoking what Anna now realized was
a Jewish joke old enough to have come from the Dead Sea Scrolls,
“a man could come up to her in the street these days, open up his
raincoat and expose himself, and do you know what her reaction
would be? I'll tell you what it would be. All he'd get from my
Gloria, God bless her, would be: “Huh, you call that a
lining?' ”
Everybody laughed—even the children, who instantly
worked out that “expose himself” had something to do with
willies. Five of them, including Anna, were sitting bunched up on
the settee, the girls in their red Clarks sandals, the boys in
their long gray Cubs socks with green Baden-Powell garters. Anna sat
on the end, quietly working her way through a plate of her favorite
cakes, miniature Danish pastries from Broers the bakers, which were
filled with sweet cream cheese and half a dried apricot. She
concentrated on finishing her Danish and tried to ignore one of
knock this thing on the head, I'm frightened you might end up
losing her.”
As Brenda spoke, guilt and shame began to coat Dan's stomach
like heavy black treacle. It was the same feeling he'd got as a
child the time his mother caught him at the dinner table stuffing
her inedibly fatty salt beef into his school trouser pocket.
Dan couldn't look at Brenda. Instead he concentrated on
scraping his spoon around the rim of his coffee cup and removing
bits of dried-up cappuccino froth. He found himself thinking that
if God was meant to be so bloody merciful, why was he inflicting
all this emotional pain on him in one day?
He began to realize how the ancient Egyptians must have felt
when the Almighty sent down the ten plagues. He was overtaken by an
urge to rush back to the
Vanguard
building and smear the
main entrance with ram's blood, otherwise there would, he felt
sure, be a swarm of locusts hovering over his desk when he got
back.
A nna had just driven round Gants Hill roundabout and, glancing
at a signpost, realized that not only was she no more than
fifteen minutes from Uncle Henry's house, but that the road seemed
slightly familiar. It was then she worked out that she must have
driven through Gants Hill in her lime-green VW Beetle the night in
1980 when she got off with Dan at Beany Levine's party. But years
before that, even, she must have come this way with her parents
whenever they went to visit Uncle Henry and Aunty Yetta.
So when was the last time she had seen them? For a few
minutes Anna trawled through her mind's Filofax, remembering
weddings at the Regal Rooms in Edmonton, Passover meals with
Harry's sister in Newbury Park and Harry's sister's son's bar
mitzvah at the Manor Hall in Chigwell. Then she got it. The last
time she had seen Henry and Yetta was at a particularly poignant
Sunday-afternoon tea party at their tiny Victorian terraced house
nearly thirty years ago.
The Canadian cousins were over from Montreal, and Yetta had
decided to lay on one of her smoked salmon bagel spreads in their
honor. Henry had decided to use the occasion to make a dramatic
announcement about Sidney. Sidney was Henry and Yetta's only
child, whom nobody in the family ever talked about because he was
in his forties and appeared to be having a homosexual relationship
with a pastry chef he lodged with in Kilburn. The family could
never work out what upset Yetta and Henry most—the thought
of Sidney living with a man or the fact that he was doing so in
Kilburn.
On the day of the tea, about thirty people were crammed into
Yetta and Henry's best room. The short, overweight men wore
suspenders. These held up trousers which seemed to Anna to come up
to their chests. They leaned back in Yetta's faded red moquette
armchairs, their chubby fingers looking incongruous gripping the
handles of her pretty pink-and-gold bone-china teacups.
Harry was impressing everybody with how well Maison Gloria
was doing and what a natural Gloria was for the garment trade:
“I tell you,” he said, invoking what Anna now realized was
a Jewish joke old enough to have come from the Dead Sea Scrolls,
“a man could come up to her in the street these days, open up his
raincoat and expose himself, and do you know what her reaction
would be? I'll tell you what it would be. All he'd get from my
Gloria, God bless her, would be: “Huh, you call that a
lining?' ”
Everybody laughed—even the children, who instantly
worked out that “expose himself” had something to do with
willies. Five of them, including Anna, were sitting bunched up on
the settee, the girls in their red Clarks sandals, the boys in
their long gray Cubs socks with green Baden-Powell garters. Anna sat
on the end, quietly working her way through a plate of her favorite
cakes, miniature Danish pastries from Broers the bakers, which were
filled with sweet cream cheese and half a dried apricot. She
concentrated on finishing her Danish and tried to ignore one of
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